Shiny Objects don't make themselves

That's right, Shiny Objects don't make themselves. If they did then my life would be much easier than it's been lately. I've wasted many days testing the various ways of combining images with my photo fresco techniques in order to make pictures and now magnets. Why magnets? Because they are a smaller version of the larger pictures, easier to store, ship and handle and they will cost less and hopefully sell more than my larger heavy full framed photo-fresco pieces. Either way the final product appears the most presentable and durable with a clear coat of epoxy on top of the graphic image and I challenged the fresco process to the other types of materials that can be placed under epoxy as a substrate and the fresco process seems to be superior in many ways.

First off for thickness. All the materials I tested have some dimension whether it is paper or a magnet or a sticker. I have tried all of them, including Japanese Rice Paper, thin Magnets, adhesive sticker paper, vellum, regular paper, acetate and direct print. Texture is important to me and as a result the direct print method is by far the most 3-dimensional of the effects, but since the final coat for the magnets will get covered with a clear coat of epoxy the 3-d effect is rendered useless through the glass-like cover. And since people like the shiny object it may have a greater appeal than the more difficult and interesting 3-dimensional graphic objects. My goal is not to abandon the 3-d Screen Print Painted Frescos, but to use them as an original and then with the photographic image I can duplicate the image part of the design into a magnet, or full framed larger fresco as a marketable piece. The original works often get damaged in transport and may be too fragile anyway for display purposes, but it does keep me in production of the tactile part of the process that I like.

The end result of this testing is that the easiest method is the one that has the fewest moving parts. In this case all of the castings with a final coat requires and adhesive to mount the image to the fresco base which increases the steps and drying time required to get to the stage of applying the clear epoxy coat. I tried polyester resin clear coating some objects, but the fluidity of the resin was not as smooth as the epoxy and the bubbles and ridges did not flatten out like the epoxy did. The epoxy did require more drying time, but it dries without the stickiness of the non-wax based polyester resins. The fresco process allows me to add the image in the casting and therefore the well that is created for capturing the epoxy is deeper and there is not problem with adhesion since the image is embedded into the plaster base itself. Less moving parts.

The problem with embedding the image is that I can't make a bunch of the bases in advance and then add the image in the epoxy stage. I have to know what image I want before I do the initial casting so that I can load the image into the mold. I do have some work-arounds on this topic that may make the process more complex, so I am not going there yet. First I have to finish the testing of the magnets for design and for magnetism too, as there is nothing worse than showing up at my store 2 weeks after delivering a sample set of magnets and to be given a box of broken pieces of plaster that have all fallen to the floor. My best adhesion technique for the magnet seems to also be the same epoxy I am using for the clear coat as I can use the extra in a batch mixed to cover the design and paint it on the back to hold the business card sized magnet to the back of the photo-fresco casting.

The substrate is challenging in that I like the idea of a printed body inside the epoxy that has a structure like the cellular structure of rice paper, or the magnetic base of a magnet or even the vinyl overlay of an adhesive sticker, but the photo fresco does not have a structure besides the thin gel of a layer that is bonded to the plaster on the back and protected by the epoxy on the front. It really doesn't matter if the inside image has a structure if the back and front are protective sealer layers. Shrinkage and Expansion with heat and cold over time may cause some movement of the materials. The wooden frames on the larger pieces does shrink over time as the water evaporates from the plaster, but I have added screen and nails to the casting to create a claw-like grip from the casting to the frame and that should preven the image from crashing to the ground out of the frame at some random moment. This also will allow me to use the castings as something more practical like a table top that can hold weight, like plates, glasses and laptops, as well as, survive spills.

Now that the substrate does not require a structure to be penetrated by the epoxy I can move back to why the fresco process is superior to the mounted image inside a casting process. A thinner substrate requires fewer coats of epoxy to make the final coating smooth and shiny. Evey layer of material acts differently with the epoxy and adhesives and some of them become transparent, like the vellum and the uncoated rice paper. Some of them become splotchy, like the regular paper. Others just require too many additional coats to become smooth, like the magnets which are thicker just by being magnets. A thin gel layer for the fresco print therefore allows for the thinnest possible image layer, that is transparent (thus requiring the white background of plaster), to coat with the thinnest possible epoxy layer to finalize a piece.

May be... art is the by product of the materials they are made with.

silicon. polyester resin. gypsum. dirt. pvc. acrylic. epoxy. materials are what made the final product, so why aren't materials worth the matter. they are. materials are content. art is the by product of materials.