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/
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