Deconstruction

Today I deconstructed one of my earlier epoxy plaster tables that I thought was of substandard construction methods and I needed the frame to complete the truck structure I am currently working on. I was surprised to see that one layer of the plaster or Duracal was adhered successfully to a clear coat of the epoxy and with the exception of some bending it had good adhesive qualities and did not break when I took the panel out of the frame. I expected that I was going to have to break and chip away at the piece to get it out, but it came out smoothly. I'd estimate this piece to be no more than two years old and it has been kept in a combination of outdoors and under a walkway exposed to a medium amount of weathering.

The interesting concept here is that I must have poured the plaster in two sessions and the separation between the two layers was very smooth and the two layers of plaster, one may be Tufstone and one may be Duracal, did not connect. the layer of the Tufstone was anchored into the frame and is a lot thinner than I would like, however it seems to be staying in the frame. I am going to leave this in the frame and see how much abuse it can handle now that it is being put into an unstable truck bed that will be bouncing down the road.

I keep moving forward with this concept even though there isn't an obvious immediate benefit besides providing me with a covered wagon of sorts. I have thought about this being a mobile gallery, or a hang out on the side of the road, like a mobile cafe just for me. I can drive for a while then climb in the back and relax. Except that I already have a trailer that I could just load up on the back of the truck. The difference is that I can't put very much in the trailer with all of the accomodations that are in it, so when the trailer is on the back of the truck it is heavy and not very useful as a truck. This new setup can be used to haul stuff. I was thinking that it should also have a lifting point so that it can be lifted off, like a pod, and then I can choose between the different units for the back of the truck depending on my task at hand.

The shape of the frame built structure on the back of the truck is taking the shape of an octagon, although it may not end up being symmetric. The height is currently about 4 feet in the center if I flatten it out there, but I am tempted to go one more angle to make it 5-6 feet, which then seems like an accomplishment and it will make a more interesting shape. Four feet might be more sensible for testing purposes and may allow the truck to blend in better than if I go higher, not to mention the added windage if I keep going up. I don't mind hunching over when I go into the back if it will keep the structure from blowing off when I try to drive it on the highway.

I broke down and purchased plywood, I had to.

Sadder things have happened, but rarely has it caused so much alarm in my head. I purchased plywood and moved into a new, less expensive, direction. I had the worker at the store cut the wood in 1/2 lengthwise and loaded it up. Just over 1/2 inch sheets for $20. I got six half pieces and am figuring out how I can cover a structure, or build a new one using this stuff. I did some bolting and screwing and it works great, even added strength where I had weak joints before. I'm not thrilled, but from a structural standpoint it can't be beat. I can always add my brick frames to the plywood as decoration or as shingles, but at least I can get something finished before it starts raining or gets colder. I'm no longer a proud man, but I will have some kind of shelter.

Buying plywood might be a triumph of sorts. It's like being forced to live within my means, but it also means living within my skills. A shelter or structure isn't art if it won't stand up and I was starting to get worried about my brick panels being used in a real world situations. My budget says plywood and linoleum are what I can afford. I'm desperate, get used to it.

Honey Do

I've been mixing my son's honey, he makes it at a bee farm across the street, into my oatmeal and it's magic stuff. Taste better than butter.

Making things is like meditation and writing about it is purging ideas

Making things, like my brick panels, provides me with a time in which I have to contemplate what I am doing and although I do have to think about the task at hand, it allows me to think about what I am doing on a broader spectrum. This is sort of a like a meditation in that it seems I have to do it everyday, thus my obsession. I mix, match and pour, but while thinking of the steps and doing them I seem to get a perspective on my work. If I have the time to write about what happened, literally what is happening with my work, then I am somehow purging the data and it allows me to go on with an understanding that if I need to go back and look at what I did, then I can find it on these pages. Although these pages are linked here and there to topics that might be relevant they are just pages of stuff I thought of while working. I don't want to call it meditation, but contemplative introspection is more or less what it is.

After this morning's work I see the folly in my efforts to create an external shell that is more durable or artistic than what is available in the local hardware store. I just don't have the machining to make things look finished, nor the money to do a big project, so half projects are strewn around my yard, waiting for me to pick them up and break them so that I can toss them on my pile in the corner of the yard. I added up the price of my trinkets and just thinking about the work to make them finished is more than I have to do to make a t-shirt print. Nobody really buys the weird stuff anyway, so why spend money I don't have to make these things that I can't get rid of and that only take up space? I counted up the money it would take to finish my brick structure and if I just go and buy some plywood I can finish it in an afternoon and cover it with some shingles and go back to making t-shirts so that I can pay the rent. It just doesn't make sense to keep manufacturing the brick panels and spending my time on them, except as the hobby that it is.

I have made some progress in my skills and materials that I can carry on to other things, like the mold making methods I've developed and the thin layering of epoxy and plaster to make a shell like panel with a photographic design built into the exterior. I can test the panels that I have on the back of my truck with a minimal amount of additional materials, but with the cost of a new batch of stuff I can get some wood on my curved printing room and start printing some t-shirts or stickers. I'll rummage through the work that I've made over the past couple of months and see if any of it looks usable so that I can clean them off, drill holes in them and use them as trinkets. If I sell these pieces for even a buck it would be more than I can get for the brick work, but at least the trinkets don't take up much space.

Some other thoughts of the day are:

1) It's easier to do things when you wake up around your stuff, versus if I end up having to give up my house and work out of my truck, store or sleeping at random places, then having to go to my truck to work. This is basically an argument for finding a way to keep the house if only I can find a way to pay for it.

2)I pulled out an old photo from my box of negatives and prints form the 1980's and I placed it on the back of a brick panel. To have a house is to have a basement and in the basement I could print my own images, which are now retro, and see if I can make something artistic from those prints. I have the darkroom equipment and a photographer is what I used to want to be. I haven't taken real photographs in years, but my box of old negatives does have some cultural interest to me and possibly others. I know if I have to move from my home I will never get around to that project again and it has only been about 30 years since I printed any of these. Frankly I am surprised that they have survived, or have they? I won't know unless I break out the dark room and make some prints.

3) Working my photos into something is an extension of the process that will most likely distract me beyond just making some prints, but I can't stop with just photos. I hate making all the regular products like magnets or stickers, but if I can print or scan some images then place them into a different product that I like then I can push these instead of trinkets. A buck is a buck, so I may as well reduce my other skills to something I can push out the door.

4) I have started making Oatmeal for breakfast to reduce my cholesterol. I lost my life insurance because of the cost, but am applying for a new policy that may be cheaper. I don't think I have high cholesterol, but it might be borderline. The funny thing is that I like making oatmeal almost as much as I like mixing plaster and epoxy, but it is good for me. I think of it as eating mush and that it is going to harden in my stomach like a brick or cement blog. It's cheap and it's fun, if only I could make trinkets out of oatmeal then I could kill two birds with one bowl.

Danger: Project Resource Depletion - Must Finish

The time has come to finish something and my resources are dwindling faster than I can complete a project. The options are to complete something like the brick shell for my Truck using some brick panels that I'm not 100% satisfied with and use my final amount of epoxy for connecting the frames. It is getting harder to work as the weather is starting to change and the project of building the shell is going to be too big to do inside. I might be able to squeeze out one more purchase of epoxy just to make sure I can finish something with some consistency. Another concept for finishing the inside is to use a coating of acrylic with the canvas brick patterns to seal the inside and add a little strength. This may be enough to solve the potential crack issues and since the plaster layer is so thin it may be able to soak in a bit. I just want to see something completed since I won't be able to keep making these panels if I don't bring in some cash. I do see the truck as my mobile workshop if I can't afford a place to do this stuff in the future.

Brick Panels Hit A Wall

I was moving ahead quite briskly when I hit a wall with my techniques for making brick wall panels using old screen printing frames. Each day I was getting thinner and thinner layers of Tufstone plaster to adhere to the Epoxy top gel coat to the point that my hybrid epoxy Tufstone frame panels were weighing in at .16 pound per square inch, pretty close to the weight of 1/2 inch plywood. These panels also include an edge layer of fiberglass cloth for reinforcement. Next I attempted to connect four panels using epoxy and I laid the panels out on the floor whilst the panels were clamped and set. It was a cold night and there was some weight on the panels, plus a little banging around, and in the morning I noticed one of the panels cracked along a seam. Not unexpected, but a little shock set in that the panels will need more reinforcement to be applied in order to survive real world situations. I can go thicker on the epoxy or put some support inside from the back once the pieces are assembled, but the conclusion is that they are not bullet proof and need to be handled with care until they are installed and reinforced.

Due to time and money constraints I am thinking of making a shell for the back of my F250 out of the panels instead of an entire room. My estimates show that I might be able to cover the bed with a decent sized cover with 20 frames, which is doable. I currently have 15 or so, but not all of them are properly reinforced, so I think they will just get knocked out of the frame with a little bouncing around. I am going to work with my reinforced frames first then allow those to dry more before putting a back layer of fiberglass and epoxy. I'm thinking of the shell as sort of a tortoise type cover, with two rows of frame panels that are a 30 degrees each and with a center row that is flat to complete the arc of a 90 degree turn. Even if the frames aren't the strongest I think it would be good to get a visual sample done and if it works I could drive the truck around to show off the technique and/or to sell some panels from the truck. Now that I have had a crack on one of the frames I am slowing down my production to 2 days per 3 frames to rethink how they should be reinforced, but overall I'm happy with the weight and they are stronger than a bunch of other items I've made. The frame that broke did not fall out and it is sort of a seam crack. I think the plaster is just a bit too think and didn't provide enough support when the weight of the frame itself was resting on the epoxy side and it cracked along the grout line of the bricks. More mortar please.

How many bricks does it take to build a fortress?

I currently have 12 completed brick panels that could be used to build with. I am making about 3 panels per day. A basic structure of 8 feet long by 16 feet wide with a height of about 8-10 feet in the center would take approximately 80 panels. This means an entire month of production is going to be required before I can build such a structure. The panels themselves cost approximately $20 each in materials without any labor cost and in my case I am using old screens, so the current cost per panel is around $9/ea. If I calculated any labor at all into the cost then the cost per panel would be a minimum of $30-40/ea, then add another $10 for assembly or around $50 per panel. This would be quite expensive for building an actual home, so this project can only be accomplished for fun. I have gotten the weight down to 5-6 pounds per frame, so the total weight of a structure would be less than 500 pounds, not counting the floor.

Removing any advantages for actual construction from the scenario since producing these brick panels for a real house doesn't seem to be a cost saving technique, then I have to have a reason for making them. It is part of an obsession that I feel I have to keep making these panels, because I haven't found a way to profitably use them and I haven't been able to sell them as art. I did make a thinner panel on canvas the other day and I liked that a lot. I'll frame it later and put up a picture for this archive. This canvas brick print could be more marketable than the completed brick panels I am making, but I don't see it as any kind of end point with this print. I was thinking that I could sell them as art and use the money that I make to fund my panels for the experimental structure. If I could sell one framed canvas brick print for $30, then it would fund the production of 3 house panels, minus the cost of the frames. Later it would be two for one if the process worked of selling prints to fund my brick panels.

The fixation on building the panels is driven partially to all of the forces I am feeling in my business and artistic struggles. I haven't really been successful at selling art over the years, besides on t-shirt designs, and so the brick panels are sort of a statement that it doesn't matter what the content is for my work, it is more the process of making something that will last. This is also the result of much of my early crappy work ends up destroyed from being stored in wet conditions or not being made out of durable materials, so I have developed a process for making brick panels that should at least endure my life cycle.

The other fact of my brick panels is that they could create a physical fortress that I think is a defense system against the financial stress that I am enduring. Every time I try to make money from my business or by expanding my real work I get stuck with more bills than I can pay and more stress than I can suffer. Things keep falling behind and no matter what I do to try and find a balance the banks and taxes keep pushing me backwards. It is like trying to sail upwind with a spinnaker. Today I saw that Wells Fargo was charging me ten dollars for each deposit for excessive activity and my wife's pay got attached by the State again for some tax debt. It's a vicious cycle of oppression that only points to one thing, which is destitution. The only way to keep from going bankrupt is to stop making money. I think the bricks are also a business version of if I can't make any money with a regular business venture then I may as well make something that is as meaningless as a brick, but at least it is a tangible measure of my efforts. I will be able to count the days by the number of bricks I've made instead of counting the days that I have been screwed by fees and bills. I like looking at my stack of finished bricks, but I don't like looking at an excel spreadsheet of expenses trying to figure out how I am being with hidden charges and bills while I eek out a small profit so that I can pay my home expenses. The tangible products just need to be turned into a physical currency with some value in order for me to find a balance that hopefully does not include fighting with a bank to make some money.

The other day calculated my odds of selling some brick stickers the other day to raise money, but by the time I added in the cost of driving to the City, $10-15 in gas, $6 in toll and some parking or coffee, it would be $25 a day just to try and make some money. This eliminated the idea of selling stickers like an art project on the streets because I would be working to break even again. The stickers don't cost that much to make, but the time it takes and cost of travel to get to a busy area would make it unprofitable. I am better off to sit at home and not move, then I won't have to eat as much or pay for gas and tolls. Without being completely negative, it does justify trying to do the same thing on the internet where my cost are lower. Either selling stickers or Canvas brick prints, I could push myself to market these as a fundraiser and at least I would not lose money by trying since I can do that type of promotion by sitting still. Links to follow.

Brick on canvas

Brick on canvas

A Plan

I am trying to come up with a plan, but everything seems so absurd. I have been going along with the economy and the "recovery", but that hasn't panned out and things just seem to be getting worse. Having survived as a brick and mortar / internet business without any financing has been my main accomplishment to-date, but now it is in my personal life that I can't make ends meet and I need a plan. Counting on an increase in business doesn't seem safe as I have reduced my staff and done everything I can to create more business and nothing really helps these days. I have started running ads on Google to increase my online sales, but that is just creating a new bill that I may not be able to pay. All of the logical methods are as risky than my absurd concepts that are cheaper and just as likely to fail as the more reasonable ideas. My conundrum about what to do to save my home is filled with pitfalls, that make the most conservative ideas seem as risky as doing nothing. Nothing is guaranteed to fail and spending any income to make money also will deplete my resources to where I can't survive or pay my bills. A plan may only be a chart to disaster, but if you are in unknown waters it is a good suggestion to have a chart.

Truly I simply like making things and indirectly I have become a business person to pay my bills and provide for my family. At times it seemed altruistic, but the underlying responsibility to provide is built into my Greek genes. I always wanted to be rich and I have located myself in an area where rich people live figuring that at least my kids will have the benefits of the good schools and the safe environment that an affluent geography provides. I could and most probably will end up living anywhere, either on a boat in the Bay for free as an Anchor Out or as a camper in my truck when all else fails. My job now is to come up with a plan to try and keep those possibilities from happening. I need to keep my existence going for the sake of the children, my wife and the few helpers I have that are keeping the store running in Los Angeles. I don't think my contributions to society are that great that I must be saved, but I do want to continue my work on designing a structure that will withstand weathering and be light enough to be considered a mobile home. I suppose that my efforts on that front are just in case I fail at creating a successful plan, then I will have that mobile photo fresco home.

There is no easy answer since business logic doesn't mean success any more. I may be getting old and need to accept that I can't generate sales and money the way I used to. Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman is a justified fictional reference here, but I don't like the way it ended, so I am reluctant to use it as an example. It is easier for me to fail than it is to give up and the one thing I remember about the movie version of the Death of a Salesman is that the main character didn't give up, he just died. A plan to a way to keep fighting because no matter how absurd attempts at success may be, they are all I have. I don't have deep pockets or loans or a magic parachute to exit my situation with. I don't even like the idea of paying my increased mortgage payments to delay foreclosure, but I don't consider it as rent so much as paying for a place to keep my life stable and keep my kids in school for a few more years until I can send them off on their own. This may be a luxury that they don't deserve, but I need to try and do what I can to allow them to stay on track.

The Plan: Create brick stickers to generate income that can be used to save my home and work space which will allow me to continue my research at creating photo fresco brick panels that can be used to build lightweight shelters. This can be reduced to Sell stickers to Generate income, but without the explanation there doesn't seem to be a motivation for people to buy my stickers. I will explain the plan below.

I have created a variety of products, from Christmas ornaments to Keychains, but each thing that I may as a product is just another product on the shelf. Some of them sell, but nothing has taken off and been successful beyond the cost to make them profitable enough to make any money or to devote my time to them. I am not giving up my day job of selling t-shirts online and managing my retail store in Los Angeles, but that isn't enough income to make ends meet, so the alternative new products have been attempts to fill the monetary hole. As my resources have dwindled, so has my patience and ability to finance new products, which means I can't make a bunch of stuff and sit around and wait for it to sell. I am living day to day and order to order, so my products can't wait for me to do a trade show or to wait until they go viral to make money. I have to be able to make something that doesn't cost much and has enough of a markup that the profit can be dedicated to my personal bills. Still I have to make something, I have to have some item or thing to give to people or I don't know how to make money. I don't want to make my lifestyle a contribution, but I do want to make something that has added value and symbolism is all that is left to work with. The brick is my symbol and a brick sticker has the markup potential and versatility to work as a product that I can sell to tell my story and make a statement that is consistent with my beliefs. Trust Me, I would do things that are contrary to my beliefs if I thought it would make a difference, but if you have to go out swinging then you may as well support your own spirit.

There isn't much time to work with and I can't count on this blog as any sort of traffic drive, but I write here to document my efforts and to try and provide a basis for my actions. I have a mortgage that is currently above $3500 a month and I have been trying to negotiate or modify the mortgage with the bank to no avail. Every day I wake up and wait for the phone to ring thinking that once I get a response I can stop thinking about the bank and go back to work. Still, no response. Assuming I get the modification before I go into foreclosure then I would still end up with a $2-2500 mortgage, which I think I can pay if I wasn't distracted by the negotiation. I know I can't pay the $3500 or more, if interest rates go higher. I know other people have worse situations than this, but I have to work within my parameters in order to survive and if things don't look good for me then I can only imagine that things are also much worse for others.

I've sat through a weekend at a NACA event and witnessed the carnage of the banking system on homeowners, or home lien owners, to be more exact. Nobody owns a home anymore, we rent it from the bank until we die. This is a desperate situation and no matter what the Obama administration has done our political and legal architecture has allowed the banks to continue to exploit the housing crisis in America. I don't deserve to own a home any more than the next person does, but I can't give up what has been created and I want my kids to be able to get through High School which means at least 5 years of existence in my current residence. I can't count on being able to afford the taxes and cost of my residence beyond my productive life, but if I can delay having to abandon my home until then, then it won't matter as much. I don't personally need that much to survive and I know how to get by on my own, but for now my life isn't just about survival.

My work has provided me with income that has provided me with a home and my instincts are what have driven me in my work, which means I can't stop now. My instincts say find something you can afford to make and put it out there with the honest facts that it isn't just a business, but a life that I am providing for. I want to be successful without making it personal, but that hasn't worked. My bricks are my symbol and if I can make $5 for each brick sticker I sell then if I can sell 100 stickers a month I can create enough profit to save my home and continue my work. My work isn't the end all be all, but I do feel I am working on a project that can also provide shelter to others in an affordable artistic way, previously detailed in many post on this blog.

1,000 stickers a month, which is about 35 stickers a day. Hmmmmm, this doesn't count the time that it takes me to make the stickers and continue my other two jobs, so let me recalculate. 20 days a month would equal selling 50 stickers a day at $5/ea. The goal here is to keep my expenses down, so I may have to sell them on the street by walking around and actually handing them to people. This means that I would have to commit to selling ten an hour for at least five hours a day, including some commute and other time or a full 8 hour a day job when you include the facts of getting to and from a place to sell things to people. If it works, I can do it. I can multiply my presence by using my website and retail store in Los Angeles to also sell the stickers, but I can't count on them to sell more than 1-5 a day without making it a big deal on either and distracting my other business operations. I have a stack of 30 stickers, not enough to make a days work, but enough to do a test.

I think I am going to go out tomorrow and make a go at it. I may ask for donations and/or say that the full stickers are $5/ea, but give away a free one made from scraps in the meantime as a promotion. I don't want to confuse the idea of saving my house, but the bricks represent a mixture of providing a shelter for my family, for others and defiance to the banking system, even though the money raised would mostly be going to the bank. I don't like that fact, but without the bank creating this situation I may not have the resolve to try this sort of absurd approach to solving my problems. I can only hope that by solving my problems I can also solve or help others.

I have considered printing or making stencils for words to go onto the Brickers, but my wife indicated that my referenced were hateful. I think things like DEFIANT, PROTEST and so on, would be a contrast to the types of pleasant words often found inscribed on rocks. I would like to think that the bricks represent a protest of sorts, but I need to increase my vocabulary before this makes sense. If you have any ideas, please leave a comment so that I can decide if I should move that concept forward. I would like to comment myself that it is very easy to write your own comments or words on a brick sticker and it can be posted somewhere around your town as a personal protest to the mortgage situation that our country faces. I will provide a link so that you can buy one of these stickers online too.

Brick Stickers - Stickers

Cover your car with brickers or cover a cardboard box and make it ur home.

Back to the Bricks

Back to the Bricks I go. Merrily, Merrily, Merrily, Life is but a Brick. I had two great dreams last night. One where the dashboard in my old truck, 1972 Ford F250, was booted up and it ran on the Android operating system. And the second invention in my dream had a computer display mounted inside the wooden frames I am making thereby giving the wall same functions of a flat screen panel. The truck was the most impressive dream world invention, but the flat panels into the wall is the most realistic and plausible.

I had a great success with using acrylic paints as the gel coat and bonding them to plaster, but I am worried that it may only be forming a skin type bond that could release once the plaster dries more. Acrylic paints are strange materials in that they often seem to bond to things, then later they pop off and release from other materials. I was excited by the initial successes and did a few experiments to see just how quick I could get some acrylic to set up and bond with the plaster, but this is when I pushed the process to quickly and failed. I ran out of Tufstone and mixed in some Duracal then attempted to bond that to the acrylic. The problem was that the acrylic didn't dry for more than 2 hours and the mixture of plaster only dried for another two hours, so I think I was too anxious to make things go that quick and that is when I saw the acrylic partially peel away leaving a skin like surface dangling from the cement. I was able to peel that off and with a little pressure I can pull the entire painted layer away from the plaster.

Another failure was with trying to remove a piece from the mold and I broke the brick panel into pieces and even the layers to I had poured separately split horizontally, exposing the weakness of pouring two layers of Duracal plaster cement on top of each other. Even though the Duracal was still wet, less than 30 minutes of dry time, the two layers did not bond and most likely would eventually separate from each other. It looked good in the mold and it looked good when I poured it, but in the end, it failed. Epoxy or some type of resin is the only good way to bond multiple layers of cement or epoxy.

Another failure was a screen painting of brick with a layer of epoxy and a vinyl sticker applied to it. When I cut the piece from the frame it curled beyond recognition. And finally I applied a layer of epoxy to a printed sticker as a top coat and it made a smooth looking print nasty. Bubbles, dirt and everything else stuck to the epoxy coated surface and made it worse than if I never had coated it at all. At least I have a better idea of where to stop when I get something to work.

Silicon molds still seem to be the best surface for working on, although if I end up staying with epoxy as the gel coat, then I can use the cheaper vinyl type molds to make my photographic reliefs. Another success that I had today was in the bonding department. I clamped and attempted to bond two panel sections together at the angles made by my silicon mold. I wasn't sure the panels would hold, but with a nice thick layer of epoxy both the cement and the epoxy panels stuck together without using any bolts. The bonds are strong enough that they can hold a second panel fully extended into the open air. The panels I made take too long to make, but I was happy to see that they would support themselves if I connect them with only epoxy. I am hoping that I can find a different way to replicate the panels in higher quantity that these earlier methods so that I can get to building instead of testing.

Shelter, - It's a brave new world

Shelter - It's a brave new world, or is it?

Things change and if anything is as important as the things we need to provide shelter and warmth, then I am not aware of it. Although communication is a huge new factor in modern existence and it may even equal the cost of living for some other categories of life, it is recognizable as a relevant fact of modern life. Still the basics are shelter, heat, food and clothing. Shelter has come to dominate the cost of living and this is not a new phenomena, but a historic fact of living in an oligarchy. The symptoms of the disease are the same, even if you change the definition of the system you live in to a democracy.

It is hard to imagine how to...

It is hard to imagine how to demean myself further, but I am willing to. I have felt the wrath of God and have survived. I have delved into the confluence of society and moved on. I still do not know why I work so much to where I can't conceive of a safe passage to death. Prosperity is no longer a goal, but truly a dream. Dreaming is no longer a respectful voyage, but a mistake. I personally feel that our ideas were built on a society that was living off the wealth of the land and it was acceptable to make money off the backs of others, so we no longer have a society whose ideas match up with reality.

A perfect society would have people working at what they enjoy to do and their work would not be toil. This is what we imagine a good life to be, one that has an employment that provides wealth enough to be able to pay for one's own self and family. Why is this that hard to accomplish? Why have capitalist, socialist, anarchist and communist alike failed at this task?

Tweaking society in small amounts one way or another is all we have as a method of advancement, so the answer is not held in the doctrines of philosophies that would make dramatic changes to our social existence. We are not even a carburetor in an engine, nor the fuel which we make engines work, but the air required to make it burn. People are the oxygen that make an engine explode and create power, otherwise a fuel does not burn. A combustion engine is built on the presupposition that air with oxygen exist. We are that air.

I am at the end of the road

Not on the road, but the end of the road. I know my path to where I am has manifested itself and I know what is around me came to be from following the road, but somehow I feel a connection to Kerouac and the hippies that followed that by being here, at the end of the road, I am them. I am the last stop on the way to Muir Woods, to the coast, on Highway 1, where if you go further you have gone beyond man's world. I am the last place where nonsensical exist in a financed world of opulence. If I leave this space then trees won't talk to me anymore.

How to make money

I need to make money and the ads on this page do not provide any significant income. I could live on writing gibberish as long as I want to live here:

http://palmsprings.craigslist.org/reo/3271636964.html

And yes, I am considering my backup plan, which is this.

I am not against this, in fact I believe in lowering my expenses to the point that I can afford what I want to do and what I need so that they balance. In fact, I would love to move into this the place shown on this ad and make it a museum of sorts, a Palace of Fine Arts. It is deserving. However, I am not able to afford a place for my real life to exist, then one that includes a school for my children. There may be schools near this structure, but I don't think I would move there for my kids to finish their education while I worked on the house. I just wanted to point out that I have options, my wife and kids may not have so much flexibility on where they are willing to go if the house is foreclosed on.

I still see myself as some rich person that enjoys the benefit of a budget that isn't "0". The truth is that finding a balance between "0" and whatever number you need is the answer to economic success. Too much requires taxation, too little requires being a beneficiary of others, including the state. A balanced spreadsheet is the ultimate request from the providers to our cause of existence. No more, No less.

The End of the Month Nears and I Have Fallen In Arrears

Times are tough and I am not one to complain or make things negative, but by following my American Dream I have gone into a nightmare. Today I had to warn my family that people may be looking at our house in a suspicious way, a sellers way. I have been negotiating with my mortgage company to get a modification of my loan, which has gone up beyond my ability to pay and have been turned down and led on for months. Now my house has gone past two months delinquent and I am about to go into 3 months, which may mean foreclosure. I received a letter telling me that I have to allow people to inspect my property, which means they would be calculating the value on the open market if they took the property back and resold it to recoup their loan. All bad news to me, but a harsh reality to my wife and kids. There is no real plan that will allow me to cut my expenses any further to the point that I can pay the mortgage and keep my business, so now is the time of desperate action.

As a fixation that distracts me from my real problem, listed above, I have been compulsively making brick projects trying to come up with a combination of materials and style that will magically put my house back together again. It has been like alchemy in that the combinations of one thing with another does make interesting compounds that seem like a magical material, but none of them are gold. I can even make yellow bricks, but I have not made a complete road to follow that will solve my financial problems. I have manifested my problems into my work, I have dreamed of the things that could somehow merge these ideas, but every morning when I wake up I get the same fateful call from the mortgage company, "Your modification is with the underwriters and we will contact you when we have an answer".

The worse scenario is if they keep requesting documents, as they have over and over again. I am losing my ability to satisfy their demands. I am losing my ability to work on my day job. I am losing my ability to do anything except make bricks in new and different ways.

Let me assume that my dream of the bricks somehow paying my mortgage was realized, what would that mean? All my work would be created to pay interest on my loan. Would I be able to accept that as payment for my efforts? Whoring my work is my only way to insure stability for my family in order for them to get to the next step, which is to go to college and or for my wife to be able to finish her efforts to have a successful career. The nightmare continues because even success on paying my mortgage is a complete compromise to sell out my work in order to pay the bank for a few more days.

Artistic compromise is acceptable in many ways because my work has been compromised from the beginning. I think I like the current work in that it is an obvious compromise and a non-sequitur of my efforts. I make bricks to save my home, I make bricks because I cannot make artistic expressions, I make bricks for others to see my exterior, I make bricks that can be used for shelter in the event that I cannot save my home, I make bricks that can cover cardboard so that I can build a new home, but my bricks are not real bricks. The bricks are veneers of bricks. The bricks are images of bricks. The bricks are fake.

I can reach almost any point I want to make when I use a brick as a metaphor. I can make almost anything I want to make when I use a brick to build with. Defying the dimensions of what a brick is, is a challenge. Throwing a brick through the bank window would be a joy. Sticking a brick on the wall is the most I can accomplish.

A brick: A brick is a block, or a single unit of a ceramic material used in masonry construction, usually stacked together, or laid using various kinds of mortar to hold the bricks together and make a permanent structure.[1] Bricks are typically produced in common or standard sizes in bulk quantities. They have been regarded as one of the longest lasting and strongest building materials used throughout history.

I took this definition from Wikipedia and accept it for all it says. There is no reason to tear apart the definition of a brick because it is a word that fits it's definition. A brick is everything that art should be but isn't. A brick is not art, because it is a brick. It's very name is a compromise and it's existence is but for others, for shelter. Yet it is, "regarded as one of the longest lasting and strongest building materials used throughout history." Over the centuries we have poured our existence into our shelters, yet we cannot make art that exist more than a few centuries. I reference this not because of the need for permanence, as all mountains will eventually fall, but because of the need for more and information and a truer understanding of ancient values.

If our societies are living on an edge, as the media constantly reminds us of, to the point that we are mere subscribers for the sake of existence, then why haven't our predecessors conveyed their epiphanies in such as way that we are not continuously oppressed as a population, or that we have to be in a metaphysical trance to comprehend a set of ideas? Is it that we only comprehend metaphors when we are under the influence of religion and booze or drugs?

I have taken on the opinion that artistic representations of past cultures activate nostalgic instincts that may allow us to empathize with past generations, in the same way that looking at an old photo of a family member reinforces the idea of heritage. If a person is not told that a photo is of a family member then a large difference in perception would exist. If a person is told that the picture is of a family member then a sense of communication with the non-existent may commence. The details of an image of a family member would be analyzed in a completely different way than if a photo is shown to someone who they do not think they are related to would have.

These feelings and comprehensions defy analysis but are artistic in nature. These types of information transfers between generations are acceptable manifestations of communication between generations. The question is what do we want to tell the future? What have we learned in the past that should be conveyed to the future? Why aren't the lessons clearer to us so that we can avoid being oppressed? Why didn't they write in brick?

Sticker Bricks - Acrylic vs. Epoxy vs Ink Jet Stickers

I have been working with adhering materials to vinyl sticker paper, which is a difficult surface to attach things to, and found that I can add some layers of adhesive acrylics that will work like a gesso on the vinyl sticker paper. This then allows me to screen print or attach molded veneers to the sticker paper. My motif for the designs to use has once again been brick patterns.

My earlier batches of stickers have had some time to weather outside and certain reinforcements haven't panned out to be successful, like rice paper or other paper based backings, because they continue to warp the shape of epoxy. I did find that reinforcing the epoxy with fiberglass created an excellent stiffness in the final stickers, but it does add some weight, work and cost to the final product. I like the idea of making extremely strong durable stickers with epoxy and fiberglass is an attractive concept, as they could be used to protect sub layers like a brick version of grip tape. The smoother the layer is that the vinyl sticker is going onto the better, but always the edges would be somewhat exposed if it is being used to cover an object, like cardboard or a screen.

Printing acrylic onto the vinyl paper may be the simplest and best application for a sticker and by using a wide mesh screen and a thick stencil I can get a slightly raised effect, although it is nothing like the depth created by using a molded piece and then adhering it to the vinyl. However, it is lighter and easier to make with some level of durability that is built into the vinyl sticker itself. Every time I go to use one of the stickers on an object I realize that it isn't really flat and smooth, so I don't want to waste the sticker on it. The top layer of my silk screens is very flat, but the screens have to be cleaned off from the residue of old ink, so I haven't tried that either. I did experiment with one sticker by covering it with epoxy, but by the time the epoxy dried the dirt and drips made it look much worse that the original acrylic looked by itself. I may just have to break down and use vinyl inks on the vinyl stickers, which is how they are supposed to be made, but I have never been a fan of the smell and cleaning required to use those materials.

The brick panels with acrylic or epoxy can be used as a brick background for other work, like a canvas with gesso, although the epoxy would be much harder paint onto. I have recently purchased some vinyl sticker paper that can be printed on with an inkjet printer, but I am suspect of it's ability to weather without a coating of some sort. That paper is expensive too, but prints on it look great and all of my production techniques can be ignored if something simply looks good. Who really cares if an item has texture these days since stickers are used on thin devices like phones and car bumpers and the thinness of the printed stickers will allow them to bend easily. Just for the sake of argument I think I am going to do a brick pattern on a sticker sheet to compare the ink jet to the acrylic to the epoxy stickers.

Photo Fresco and Screen Painting Materials

After reviewing the work that I found ditched in my yard I had a few glimmers of brilliance as it relates to materials.

1) The screen painting of Michael Jackson was one of my first realizations that I could use the screen as a canvas and I had used acrylic paints to quickly make that piece. The acrylic paints held up pretty well in an outside environment. I washed the picture off with a garden hose before I too the picture, but it was no worse for wear after 2-3 years of being outside. This indicates that the acrylic bonds well to the screens, like the photo sensitive emulsion I use for coating screens and the acrylic bonds well to itself. As an inside material acrylic should be acceptable as a painting material, but in standing water it will turn white and change color.

2) The plaster and gypsum materials held better than I thought inside the frames, better than cement. This is not to say that plasters like Tufstone and gypsum based cements like Duracal are acceptable outside materials, but with a little reinforcement with some epoxy, then they don't just flop out of the frames the way that portland based cement does. Some of the same issues exist with the color of the plaster and Duracal in that with excessive moisture you cannot count on the exterior color with only pigments, they need to be painted, becuase the moisture will allow the exterior color to change or lighten. The exterior coat can be a gel-coat of some more resistant material like epoxy. A sealant can also be added to Tufstone to make it harder by mixing in a glue in the place of water.

3) Thin layers of the plasters can be used, if applied correctly to create a stronger base for the acrylics, and create and insulating and sound dampening barrier. Although I like screen painting for the visual effects, I like to have a thicker structure to support the pictures and to kill the drum like sound that screens can make. The biggest problem is the addition of weight onto the screen and depending on how thick the layer is the weight can be from 3 to 6 lbs. I have been using laminates on the back side of the screen lately to create the exterior shell and this may free up the inside of the screen to remain a screen painting of sorts. Determining the right way to make an exterior shell that isn't too much trouble to connect to the screens has been the focus of some of my latest work, but nothing looks simpler than an nice thin layer of the Duracal for a strong backing simple backing that dries flat when required.

Spiders and Snails live there, why can't I?

Photo Fresco Show - Decay

Somewhere under the leaf stack, snails and spiders hide.
Snails and Spiders can hide under the leaf pile.
Why then, oh why can't I?

I went through a pile of old fresco frames decaying in a pile of weeds and to me this is the equivalent of an art show. I only get to see what has survived through my abusive storing techniques and this provides me with a glimpse of how these photo fresco pieces that I am making will survive. The first most obvious thing is that there are other living creatures usually on the back side of the frames, most notably snails and spiders. Typically there is 1 live snail and 1 live spider. Each frame seems to allow a separate space for spiders to do what they do and I think that the snails just like hanging onto the cement like interior. It is possible that they are leeching something from the plaster or cement, or they just go there to die. Still it is amazing that each frame is like a little eco-sphere.

Some of the frames have images that have decayed more than others, but there is still a ghost image that is possibly more mysterious than the original. Some of the early work that I did in plaster was just a literal transfer of the digital graphic into a piece of plaster, which is where the photo fresco concept came from, but I didn't like the literal copies even though they were a success from the transfer concept. However, now with the weathering and decay, these pieces are buy faint, blurry, barely recognizable images and I actually like them more than the originals. Other pieces that I made are still intact or slightly weathered and they appear better with wear than the original work. I think I like them because they survived more than for the art, but each set or piece represents transitions that have moved me forward in some way technically. In fact some of these techniques may be worth repeating or implementing again.

An example of this is the 6 pound epoxy plaster pieces that I made as a set using acrylic paint and a digital transfer process. Overlooking the transfer process and the embedded image into the epoxy and plaster, I have seen that these pieces are holding in the frame without any additional bonding and the seams appear to be sealed. This is a success in terms of weight and durability, even though that was not my goal when I made those. My goal was to have a lighter piece with artwork embedded in it, that would not fall out of the frame and onto someones head. Also it was to not be as heavy as some of my earlier work and six pounds seems to be lighter than I have been getting lately using cement and epoxy or urethane and epoxy. I remember making these pieces and spending a certain amount of time raking the back of the pieces so as to create a grid that other tiles could be attached to in case I wanted to seal the back further. I don't want to rush backwards and recreate these, but as panel that could fit in the back of the more resistant cement / epoxy brick panels this could work. Or these frames could be mounted on the back side of the other frames and thus form a box with the two sides serving different purposes, but who needs to take up that much space. Still, that is only the amount of space that a standard wall consumes, which is about 5-6 inches deep. Two of these frames would be about 3-4 inches deep, but that seems too simple to me. I like it lighter and tighter than bulky and heavy. I'll post the pictures and call this a retro-show of my early work.

Lastly, the reference to the Wizard of Oz that I quoted above. I have been pulled towards making yellow bricks as both a background and functional color that is lighter than the typical red brick. The symbolism should not be lost if I do go that way as I would like to think of myself as the wizard building yellow brick houses or at the very least I am working behind a digital curtain and this ain't Kansas.

<The complete Decay 2012 Show can be found online here: http://photofresco.com/Photo_Fresco_Show_2012_Decay/Decay/

Sideways Bricks - Fatal Construction

Making epoxy brick veneers that will go vertical instead of horizontal.

I uploaded the previous text from my phone to this blog. It is a little difficult to think and type on the small device, but admittedly, short burst of note taking is all that this blog is. By using the phone I can update post with images that chronicle my experiments without long explanations or justifications. This blog is often drives into deep thought about the work that is redundant and repetitive, just for the sake of mixing up the words just like I mix up my materials. Since I don't think anyone reads this anyway the short phone post with images may be just as good as the longer post about my progress and lack thereof.

Frankly, I need to move on to a new blog that is focused more on my day job, the one that makes me money. I love making these photo fresco frames and developing a lighter and tighter method of mixing materials into art-like bricks, but I have to make money again and there really isn't going to be any significant money coming from this work to pay my bills. The brick structure concept comes into play in the sense that once I am removed from my home and have defaulted on all of my bills, then I can take all of my screens into the woods with my big truck and build a home using these techniques. At that point I won't be able to experiment, so this work will have to be the basis of my construction techniques. I should still be able to pay rent on my storage, where my excess supply of frames are, in the catacombs of hell at the end of the earth. I will travel through hades and grab load after load of screens, then buy the cheapest materials that have proven to be successful at building these curved structures and build.

When I run out of screens I can run ads on Craigslist and collect old frames from other printers around the country, then buy the local materials and find a place to build another structure, and on and on. Fatal Construction.

What does it mean to have a cement sticker?

Let's assume your home is made of cardboard. Then the rain and the snow are your enemies. The wind leaves your structure in tatters and the dew weakens your carefully arranged structure. Now let's introduce adhesive cement stickers into your realm and voila, your cardboard maze becomes a weather resistant structure almost providing a sense of safety and shelter while the wind and rain bounces off the concrete and cardboard walls. This temporary shelter is but one example of the many uses for cement stickers.

Now that there is a potential use for these items the big question becomes how much will they cost? Cement is relatively cheap and vinyl adhesive stickers aren't too expensive as compared to wood, but the process of putting these together is what will take some time and money. Also time is a factor, because it takes a certain amount of dry time to make these materials work the way they should. Cement takes 2-4 days to dry and Epoxy takes about 2 days, so a little more than a week would be necessary to get production rolling on a batch processing system that can produce laminate cement stickers. The best part about this is that corporate logos could be molded into the cement to pay for the process, Why Not? Beer, Wine, Crack Inc., 47%, or something like that. Adhesive stickers can make a box a home and why wouldn't companies want to make a difference. This may be the missing link between homeless and not homeless, if only there was a way to get indoor plumbing on the streets. Flooring is an issue, but that can be worked out pretty quickly with a little indoor-outdoor astro turf on top of cardboard and the deed is done.

Still a vinyl sticker can be just as good as cement without all the weight. Vinyl stickers would adhere to the cardboard better than anything and the top surface itself is resistant to water, so what's the big deal with cardboard, just sticker that shit and most weathering problems are solved. Cardboard may be the missing link for providing support inside my panels without adding much cost or weight. I have been resistant to using foam even though it is light, but cardboard has a different ring to it since it is not a common building material. I like using potential waste products for building materials and card board is a readily available material that if protected from the weather can provide a form of support.

Dimensional Stability in an Adhesive Backed Label

Sounds simple doesn't it? Making a vinyl sticker to begin with isn't easy. Screen printing on vinyl requires a special ink that stinks, however, over the years I have been using a multipurpose ink that seems to work pretty well. Still when you think about things like dimensional stability a vinyl sticker isn't one of the strongest things on earth, even though they are used on vehicles all over the planet. Since these stickers are going to be protected by cement on top, the biggest issue is the adhesion to the sticker below. I made a sticker years ago using a mixture of resin and eventually it peeled off leaving on the white sticker below, so to make a good vinyl sticker with something other than just ink I am going to need to bond the top layer in a way that insures that both pieces expand and shrink together.

I have been testing many substrates that can work to keep epoxy from bending and warping and regular fiberglass seems to work the best versus some other fiber based materials that increase the amount of bending as they bend themselves. My testing has led me to create a vinyl based sticker that has a layer of fiberglass adhered to it thereby creating a strong bond between the sticker and the stable layer. One half of the fiberglass is left uncoated, the top coat, so that it can be saturated with epoxy when the brick layer is adhered to this as the substrate. Assuming everything stays together then the sticker layer is then applied to any surface that it will bond to. I am hopeful that the strong bond made with epoxy to cement will keep the top layer adhered to the cement and then the cloth layer will help keep the stability in tact between the epoxy and the sticker. The multiple layers are potentially problematic, but the thickness of each layer can reduce the amount of movement that goes on in regular shifts in temperature. The thinner each layer is then I think it will bond better versus thick layers and the most insulating layer being the top layer is providing a safety layer that keeps the lower layers from moving as much and from being exposed to water.

How to make a concrete sticker or Brick Sticker aka Brickers

I used to call my brick stickers Brickers, but I thought it was too corny. Here I am again working on this concept and it is as if the previous stuff I did does not apply. I think I need to backtrack on my previous work, but if I just add the new products I am working with together without referencing the old work, then I may come up with a new solution to the problems that I faced when I stopped working on the old project. If I remember correctly the problem was that the brickers were boring unless you decorated or drew on them. Also it didn't make sense to have one brick as a sticker since one brick fails to make a pattern or the effect that bricks are known for. I did stick on bricker on a highway post and it is still there, no worse for wear.

Now my concept is to actually make a concrete sticker that has a purpose, which is to adhere a protective surface to my shingle house structures and with concrete being the most resistant product that I can find to weathering. Vinyl sticker paper seems to have the most dimensional stability, but making the two work together may be difficult, because nothing wants to stick to the vinyl. Still dimensional stability is the secret to everything. If things don't move against each other then they will stay together, but if materials change shape, expand and contract at different rates as the temperature or conditions change then that will create space in between the materials. Any space will allow for moisture and then moisture will expand and contract inside of the items thereby increasing any existing differences in the shape or space between items. This is the science of decay and these are the forces that bring giant boulders to the bottoms of mountains, piece by piece as they are fractured over thousands of years of weather. Had these boulders been coated properly, then they would still ride high above it all, but it just doesn't happen that way.

So by sealing a surface with a good sticker, or bricker, the subsurface is protected from weathering and such, but the sticker has to be adhered in such a way that no water can seep in and break it away from the subsurface. Assuming the subsurface structures are insulating each other by keeping the heat and cold from coming in between them, then their bond should last much longer than if there was not protective layer covering them. Vinyl stickers do peel and release from their subsurface, but I think that is because they are directly exposed to the sunlight and not covered themselves by a protective layer like cement. This is also why a bricker made with epoxy won't work as well, because the epoxy would conduct the heat into the sticker, whereas, a cement coating should insulate the bottom from the heat or reflect the heat since it has is harder to conduct heat through the cement. How much heat and for how long can a vinyl sticker last? Not sure, but if the space in between the sticker and the subsurface is kept like a vacuum then it should last until the exterior decays or the interior rots away.

My prior experiments had me printing to make the bricker and or applying adhesives to the back of thinly printed bricks using a mixture of plaster and acrylic known as Forton MG. Now that I think about it the reason that I may have stopped using the Forton gypsum based mixture is that I realized that it would not survive outside unless it was coated because any plaster and gypsum mixture is still subject to absorption of water and decomposing faster than materials that resist water to begin with or that can be saturated and won't break down. Plaster based materials just aren't good for exterior use and if you have to coat them with thick sealants there is still the risk of penetration by the elements and the sealants will eventually break down on the top surface. Now I am trying to make the top surface, the cement surface, the most resistant surface to the elements with or without an additional coating.

Adhesive Used for License Plate Stickers

Every time I register a car and get the little sticker that goes on the tag I am impressed with the adhesive that is used and how well they stick. The sticker is very thin and usually I have to stick it on top of another sticker, but it seems to grab well and adhere smoothly. The only drawback is that you don't want to mess up with the sticker because it seems almost impossible to peel back off without tearing the sticker apart. This could be due as much to the thin sticker as it is to the adhesive that is used on the sticker, but I really want to try that glue.
br>I've got some label adhesive that I got from Douglas and Sturgess in Richmond and this stuff is pretty good for a lot of surfaces, but I don't know if it creates the strong bond that this super adhesive does. The thicker label adhesive works well on uneven surfaces and fills voids like an acrylic paint. I have tried to use it as a layer in between epoxy to stick items onto vinyl sticker paper, but it seems like too many steps.

Cement Stickers - adhesive backed cement relief designs

How do you make something unique these days?

1) Google the topic and see what comes up:

Usually you can stop here, since most everything has been done before and the most obvious things that have preceded you in your efforts will show up by using the first few words that describe your item or creation.

2) Check out patents:

I don't know how to do this, but if you find some technical phrases that relate to your product, then a patent may already exist that deals with this technique or product.

Assuming you find nothing, then you may have a unique product or procedure. I have been playing with a bunch of different techniques under the general term, Photo Fresco, but I may have gotten closer to identifying a workable product that doesn't come up when I plug my phrases into the search engine.

Previously I mentioned the idea of Brickers, that is stickers that are like bricks, so you can put them on things and basically make a brick wall with stickers. The print was an actual brick-like material and it was a fun idea. Now I am expanding on this concept with a thin layer of cement and if this works, I am thinking that cement stickers are even better than brick stickers. I've succeeded in making epoxy stickers using a wide range of pigments, some of which can resemble cement, but I am going a step further with the idea of using cement in the molds instead of epoxy. My first test have been a success, however, the edges are not as smooth as with epoxy.

The benefits that come from a cement sticker are simply contained in the weather resistant characteristics of cement versus epoxy, resins and plasters. Ultimately the exterior surface protects the interior surface, so if the outside is strong and resistant to weathering, then the interior, i.e. an adhesive vinyl substrate can survive longer. My comparison is whether or not a well protected vinyl sticker is as good as a layer of paint or adhesive?

I have been testing glues and paints to try and see which items are the most compatible with cement, but the preparation dictates the ability of a paint or glue to work with cement and the dry times are restrictive for where these things could be used. A sticker can be used almost anywhere and I haven't found any cement stickers when I do my Google thing, so it looks good that Cement Stickers may be a unique thing.

Portable Strutures, Yurts and Tents

I did a little Googling for portable structures and this is what I found:

Hurricane Proof Shelters: The InterShelter

http://www.intershelter.com/

Yurt Domes: Shelter Systems - Tent Yurts

http://www.shelter-systems.com/

Exposition Domes: Pacific Domes

http://www.pacificdomes.com/

Geodesic Dome Shelters - Dome Guys

http://www.domeguys.com/geodesics/129/disaster-relief-shelter-domes/

And it goes on...

The point here is to see if my curved shingle structures are different from these popularized dome structures and if mine are at least as good as these other types of geodesic domes. These dome structures that I found online seem to be good for disaster relief efforts, trade shows and camping. Or maybe that is the best market for selling these types of portable structures and their most compatible use.

Ten Pounds of Wood, Cement and Epoxy - That's It.

How much can you get into ten pounds anyway? I am trying to make a shingle by recycling some previously used screen printing frames. This "shingle" also needs to serve as a wall structure and decorative art piece in order to build a curved protective shelter for outside use. I have gotten pretty far along with the concept, but each time I think I am ready for protection I either run out of money or rethink the materials and try to make it a little better. Often I end up back where I started, but still there are minor changes, hardly recognizable to the human eye, that make the differences worth the effort. Durability, detail, cost and weight are the main factors that I am trying to balance with these photo fresco composite frames that are now shingles, but the invisible agent is also adhering them together.

Recently I went through a test where I applied rice paper to the back of setting epoxy and it looked great, for awhile. I left them on a pile outside in the weather and slowly they started to curve and bend. I left them for a couple of weeks and came back to find them curled over like a Fortune Telling Fish and the two materials were literally cracking apart from each other and the epoxy was breaking away from the paper. On the surface this looked like a good idea with the rice paper providing a thin structure to support the epoxy and potentially a texture or surface for more epoxy or adhesive to attach to, but it didn't work. This is the case over and over again with different materials and until they go through an exhaustive test it is hard to feel comfortable that things will work in the wide range of physical environments that shingles will find themselves in.

I am more of a craft person and kind of an artist more so than I am a structural engineer. This means the limits of my ability to create a product for the real world have probably been reached, but by trial and error I am working out the details and hacking together a shingle structure that should work as good as a kid's playhouse and be as durable as a shelter at an Occupy protest campsite. Which brings to mind the other characteristic that I would like to employ and that is modular. I love the idea that the frames could be taken apart and transported quickly and easily, thus making them tent-like too. I know this is too much to expect from ten pounds of wood, cement and epoxy, but I think I am very close to making that happen.

Yesterday Cement on Epoxy, Today Epoxy on Cement

I keep going back and forth with the casting materials to determine which product is the right surface for the exterior and which product is the right material for the interior. Although there are many considerations, including but not limited to resistance to weathering and exposure to sunlight, finished detail and strength, cost and ease of use and ability to release from the molds, as well as, to adhere to the frames with minimal hardware and labor. Cement or a hybrid of cement, like surface bonding cement may be the best exterior coating that I have come up with and epoxy is the best chemical mixture that works well for bonding and sealing a piece to a wood or aluminum frame.

My previous experiments were almost settled with a combination of epoxy on the outside and cement on the inside, but no matter what I do I have to worry about the epoxy on the outside looking worn from exposure to heat and cement on the inside releasing from the frames and falling on the interior of a structure. Over the last week I made a veneer of cement that measures less than a quarter of an inch and I liked the amount of detail that it preserved. Bonding to it immediately wasn't successful, but I think I can work with a thin veneer of cement on the exterior as a better surface for weathering and use an epoxy cement type of mixture to bond the top layer and adhere the whole piece to a frame. I don't like the idea of drilling through the thin veneer of cement for bolting the frames together, but I think the top surface needs to be finalized and then I will work around the problems that are created as a result of using these materials once it is finalized.

Cement can be painted and should resist the absorption of heat more than the epoxy and by resisting the heat this should create a more stable temperature for the bonding layers and reduce the shrinking and expanding more than if I used epoxy on the top layer. The plastic finishes like epoxy and polyester resin seem to create very hot surfaces and in some cases that will crack sooner than I think they should. Although the fragility of the cement layer is potentially the weakness with a thin layer of that material, I am hopeful that if I back it up with more rigid and solid materials I can make it strong enough for the job at hand, which is to make weather resistant frames that can be used like tiles and shingles to build a dome like structure.

From brick I cometh

To brick I fallen

Building a cave from the outside in

Usually a cave is made by digging into something and carving out a space. I may be misusing the phrase when I say I am building a cave-like structure, but this won't be the first time I've mixed my metaphors. I moved some text from a prior post to here to focus on the cave concept by itself.

Use of cement for the inside has also created problems with anchoring that go beyond weight. Cement shrinks as it sets, so the tendency for the piece to come out of the frame after it dries is great and requires additional anchoring, which adds to the complexity and amount of work required to make these frames secure. I have made a bunch of different test on anchoring techniques, but I have reduced my methods down to using thinner layers and the adhesive qualities of the materials themselves to minimize the risk of breakage in the frames.

The benefit of an inside surface that is made from a poured material is that I have been able to throw in a mold on the inside surface which provides a decorative element to the entire project. This could in fact be the best part about the bricks in that the outside layer is providing a shelter and the inside surface of cement is not only providing some insulating properties and fire protection, but is a photo fresco design on it's own. The inside layer could be a relief of a company logo or a relief pattern that repeats inside the wall like the brick pattern.

The inside layer is now where my focus of design is on and where I feel my hack artistic skills can be applied. I haven't gotten the same smooth results with an inside layer that I can get with the original outside piece, but I like the rougher cave-like texture that I am getting by just pressing in a thin mold while the cement is setting. This could be perfected if I make the two parts separately and mount them together, but again, more cost and time to prepare. My current process is quick and as inexpensive as I can get without sacrificing on achieving the goal of a functional product.

I have always used the metaphor that some art, like that found on ancient vases or cave walls, is journalistic in nature. The information contained on things made in prior eras is transferred to new and different societies through these pieces. Most materials and information that is created by a society ends up in a trash heap or simply falls victim to the realities of weathering and time and they disappear. The hardened items like metals and monuments of stone last the longest. Occasionally something like a vase or statue is unearthed that was preserved as a result of having been buried or protected in a cave from the light and weather. Now I have my own way to build not only pieces that can go in caves, but the dome is sort of the cave itself and the inside walls are mine to design like engravings on a cave wall.

I would love to build one of these in the desert as soon as possible so that the weathering can start taking effect, because I really want to see how the panels how up under real conditions in different environments. The desert is a great place to test durability because of the intense heating and cooling, as well as the wind and abrasion from blowing sand. It would also be fun to build a curved dome structure where it freezes and snows, then one where it is humid and rains. Still I haven't worked on the sealing between the frames, but I'm not as worried about that as I probably should be.

Weight plays a big role in the design issues

These frames may look simple, but to get the weight down it's been a challenge of materials and skills. I remember learning that most of the weight that goes into a structure is used to make a structure stronger to carry it's own weight. As with a bridge that is built from steel, the combined weight of the steel is so great that two-thirds of the structure is to hold up the steel. A good comparison of modern techniques of bridge building would be the new Oakland Bridge design compared to the old Oakland Bridge design.

The new looking bridge required more elegant design skills and hi-tech materials even though it looks smaller and simpler. This is similar to what I think has gone into the frames that I am building. The new brick facade frames don't look much different than some of my earlier ones, but there has been huge jumps in technique, materials and even design to make the new ones lighter and more useful.

The biggest change has been about whether or not a cement back is required or not for the frames that are made with an epoxy gel coat. I have installed a few of the frames without a cement back and although they are approximately 3 pounds lighter, the cement provides a more stable backing for the epoxy. Earlier models were in the 10-15 pound range and would be difficult to use in a structure without additional external or vertical supports. I don't see any point in getting a 20" X 24" finished frame below the 8 pound level that I am currently although I know I could if I worked with more fiberglass reinforcement and removed the cement, or put some sort of foam backing, however these techniques would also increase the cost.

The rest of this post was moved to a the next post on cave building.

Two steps forward, no steps back.

Over the last couple of weeks I have moved towards bigger and better things, like dome structure. The real art to me is the frames themselves, but I haven't sold many of them separately, so a dome structure provides me with a way to use them. The frames shown above are an example of a lightweight waterproof rectangle that could be used as a piece of framed art by itself or tiled out and mounted together to build a bigger thing like a wall or dome. Here is an example of a bunch of the frames bolted together to form a curved structure.

Only one of the frames is made with a sealed brick fresco in this structure, the red one towards the left. This particular one is made with epoxy and cement or plaster and is heavy compared to the new ones shown above. The new ones are made with urethane resin and epoxy with some fiberglass cloth reinforcement. Although they are a lot lighter I am worried about the potential for the plastic materials to sag as they are exposed to heat from sunlight and think that they need some reinforcement to keep them flat.

The frames shown above are inset in the frame and although they are water tight, I am worried that pooling water could accelerate the break down of the epoxy, so I have a newer version that covers the entire panel with a brick veneer that I would use in a dome structure. The time required to make multiples of these panels is a function of how many molds I have and currently I am working with only one mold, so I can only make one frame a day. I need approximately 60 frames to get a decent sized structure done and I want to get it finished before it starts to rain, but 60 days for 60 frames seems like a long time. It's like I am making a structure so that I can build more of the same structures in it. Testing the model on the factory floor.

Urethane is the Goop of the Gods

Urethane is the Goop of the Gods. When God made Adam he used Urethane. How else would the clouds be able to stay in the sky? How else would the planets be able to float in the heavens? How else would the mountains stay connected to the earth? The obvious answer is a liberal use of urethane resin mixed one-to-one with pigments added as necessary. There are many different types of urethane, but I have been testing the urethane resin, the one the Gods use, to cast a few frame panels with a brick pattern for my screen house.

The idea here is that the urethane resin may bond to the aluminum frames better than the epoxy resin does. If this is true then I can use the urethane, with pigment, to make my brick frames and have a more water tight bond to the frame, thus saving me time and money from having to do additional work on applying veneers to the exterior of the frame house to protect and seal the shelter structure. I have also set up a few test with using the urethane as a glue sealant in between two clamped frames to see how well the bond is for construction of the structure. I haven't used epoxy for this because it takes too long to dry and I have avoided using polyester resin because it seems too brittle and smells too much.

My thinking is that I can mix a batch of urethane resin, 60-80 ounces at a time for doing molds of the brick pattern and at the same time use the extra and the splooge on the side walls of the mixing container to glue together a set of frames before I install them into a structure. I still may apply some sort of trim on top of the joints, but my hope is that the strength and small amount of flexibility of the urethane may be a more durable adhesive caulk than the store bought stuff.

My cost analysis suggest that the urethane is cheaper to use than the epoxy and potentially just as strong for the exterior shell once I add a decent amount of pigments into the mix, possibly even less flexible under heated conditions, which may prevent sag. I am estimated the cost of the urethane to be $10 per frame, not counting fiberglass cloth and pigment. The frames themselves cost approximately $12, so a combined estimate of $25 per frame is conservative, not counting labor. By using old frames I can save the $12, but there is some cost in cleaning them off, so I would round that down to $10 off, or $15 per frame using recycled frames.

The weight of one 20" X 24" frame is 2.5 lbs. I have done a weight comparison of epoxy filled frames and that adds approximately 2 more pounds. With a backing of plaster material to strengthen the epoxy a final weight of 8 lbs per frame is achieved. If the urethane does not sag as much as the epoxy then I may be able to get away without the plaster backing and that could put my finished weight at less than 5 lbs per frame. So to cover an 8 X 8 section with a frame wall the total weight would be around 30 frames which would weigh approximately 150 lbs. Without the resin and just by coating frames with a urethane I could build a structure of the same size weighing only 90-100 lbs with some finished framing and paint.

Assembly time of a structure could be as little as 2 hours - 4 hours depending on how much drilling would be required. I am sure this could be less with more than one person, but I am talking about casual building time which would allow time to drink coffee and admire the geometry while building. The total volume of a dismantled unit would be 48" X 24" X 20", not counting the wood trim, which means it could fit inside the trunk of a car, the back seat of a car or into two shopping carts in case you have an urban street lifestyle.