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.
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