It's not what it appears to be

Nor does it mean to be. What is the function of visual representations used as decor? Should decorative art be used to fill the void of space created by having walls? Yes. Should art be used for nostalgia and reminiscing of historical events? Yes. Should art have intrinsic cultural value, which may later be translated to literal monetary value, as if it is an investment in culture that pays? Yes. Art as decor may have any combination of these things, as well as, be something that aesthetically adds something to the environment that it is displayed in.

Sometimes I think that the display element is important, but in most cases I work with that in mind initially, but just keep moving deeper into the acts of making pieces. The more I am creating things that seem to fit the format of being able to hang in someones space or be used as furniture I then forget about the format and deal with the materials and the process. In the end it's like creating a riddle so that if these pieces end up somewhere and then a person takes an interest in it, then the materials and final piece will make them think deeper about how it is made. I am using combinations of casting, photography printing and simple framing to achieve these photo-fresco pieces and I have personally forgotten most of the initial reasons why I was making them in the first place, but I keep getting closer to something that I feel I can be prolific at.

Each layer of complexity that I add onto the process of making these pieces seems to have the goal of making it simpler. The idea that I have to be able to make them easily keeps pulling me back to modifying the techniques. As I have displayed many of the pieces I have made over the past few years I keep finding problems like shrinkage in the material or frame which causes some of the pieces to fall from the frame. Yellowing of the epoxy caused by uv exposure. Cracking of polyester resin and breaking because of the weight and eventually the piece may fall. I've dealt with most of these problems one way or another and have gotten to a place where the process is still simpler than it may have been if I had considered the job done in the early stages. I can always find better ways to make things, but somehow I feel that if I simplify the process instead of making things more complex then in the end I can just make things with materials and techniques that I enjoy and are affordable.

I am constantly amazed at how many materials and techniques there are to combine into making a final piece. So far I am using, photo chemicals, screen printing, acrylic, silicon, urethane, epoxy, polyester resin, atomized metals, hybrid gypsum products like Tufstone and Duracal, as well as, t-shirt printing materials like plastisol. My least favorite thing to deal with is cleaning up the ink residue, but this is required because most of the wooden frames that I use are from screen printing jobs I've done over the years and they are covered with ink and take. Recycling these frames is a large reason I am working in this format to begin with. The wooden frames that measure 16" wide by 19" tall are good for molds as well as frames, plus I have over 1000 of them in storage and slowly I have been making use of them by creating these photo fresco pieces.

I sold one the other day in my store in Los Angeles and it had a job name written on the frame in sharpie ink, but the buyer didn't care and said, "it added to it." Thus another clue in the riddle.

Silicon sticks to silicon, but urethane does not stick to silicon

Sure that may seem obvious to you, but it takes a lesson in mold making for me to learn that urethane does not stick to silicon, but silicon will stick to silicon when trying to make duplicate molds. The idea here is to increase my production capacity on the type of molds I am making or to come up with a more direct way of making reliefs. The raised texture and small pattern have helped me overcome some of the glossy effects of using an epoxy gel coat as the main top surface, so making a more efficient way to create the reliefs has become my current goal.

Ornaments turned to magnets -

The photo casted emblems that started out as ornaments ended up as magnets in my retail store in Los Angeles. This isn't such a bad thing as a magnet just may be the commodity item that can work for these pieces. Larger castings are heavy and need to be mounted on a wall which requires some mechanical skill. Magnets placed in the back of the setting materials allows the bond to be created between the magnet and the piece while it is setting. This requires some patience because if I drop the magnet in before a reasonable amount of set time has occured, then the magnet drifts down into the material and doesn't work as a magnet either. I have been using a shape that resembles a smart phone, rectangular with curved edges and although there is some creep of the epoxy under the image, nobody complained about this as it sort of looked artistic.