This site has never been a successful site for traffic or a consistent diary of my work on photo frescoes, but it is one of the few places I have put anything to text about my endeavor to make durable photos. Over the last month I have dug-in and pushed myself deeper into the chemicals that I use to make my photo fresco prints and found a few new combinations that seem to be working, consistently. Yesterday I set up a batch for the first time that included more than a few test pieces, a bakers dozen to be exact, and I am hopeful that all of them will come out successfully when I release them from the molds later today. It's not a comeback, but a revival of the process of Photo Fresco.
The idea of a fresco is that the pigments from paints are absorbed into a wet plaster and is embedded into the hardening substrate. The result is a sort of merging of materials versus a paint on top of a substrate type of approach. The uses of fresco painting historically is greater than my knowledge, but the basic idea of absorption is what I am emulating with my efforts. Fancy gluing is what fresco painting really is, the binder is in the plaster and the absorption of the setting plaster pulls the pigments into a fixed state.
In my case I am using modified plasters, pigment based digital prints and epoxy hardeners to create something that I think is stronger than actual plaster frescos. Plaster itself is subject to deterioration due to moisture into the porous surface of the gypsum based materials. My process includes gypsum based plasters but not as the main binder. My main binder is epoxy, which bonds to the pigments that are printed onto film and then the epoxy is bonded to a plaster to stiffen and hold the epoxy. This could be called fancy gluing, but because each step is done in a wet state it is in this wet state that I feel like the bond is an emulation of the fresco process.
The durability of my fresco prints is coming from the idea that epoxy is my main binder with the pigments on the top surface. I have tried to avoid using a top coat of epoxy so that the pigments are directly facing outward from the print. This may not be a long term solution because some coating or protective layer may need to be put on top of the pigments to truly encapsulate the pigments and seal the image. Any layer on top of the pigments is going to provide a sheen or sense of lamination that I have been trying to avoid.
Until I due some weathering test there is no way to know just how strong my photo fresco prints are. The epoxy prints are potentially enough to call the process photo epoxy gels, epoxrescoes or something like that, but I enjoy using plaster or cement based materials to strengthen the back of the epoxy and can get a really good bond if I work with the materials when they are wet. This final step keeps me in the fresco game and provides a back layer that is strong and potentially durable to some basic weathering.
Another integral step in my process has been to re-use a bunch of screen printing frames that I have from my t-shirt printing business. This involves scraping ink, removing tape, washing on off the 16" X 19" frames and then coating them with a shellac for a somewhat dirt free surface to pour my chemicals in. I can't really put a value on my time, but it doesn't seem profitable to do this except that it is satisfying when I can take a piece of my old work trash and turn it into a new piece. I think I could do this process more effectively if I remove the old screens from the mix, but since this entire process was built around using these old frames it doesn't seem right to do so.
