Brick Photo Fresco Screen Prints - Although I think I am

I often think that I am finished, at the last incarnation of my work, able to complete the development phase and move into the production phase, however, this is just a fallacy. I have possibly always been at the finished stage and the constant modifications and developments are the work itself. There may never be a finished stage and I may keep spending my time thinking that the next twist and turn is what is the most important aspect of my work. Without this catch in my logic I would fall into a rut.

Recently I appraised the amount of work that was left, not sold or broken, and loaded it into my van for storage. Somehow I felt this to be an accomplishment in that I still have my work to play with, assuming I can move it to a safe location. I even loaded the broken pieces of several items into a suitcase to take to my backyard where I am going to dig a hole and bury my chipped, rusted and scarred pieces into an underground pit where they can decompose as they should. I like showing my work, but I am not a big fan of selling it.

We sold one piece in the store to the guy actor from Harold and Maude. He always buys my experimental work and then for some reason or another has to return it. In this case it broke when it was being hung on the wall because the item is self-supporting and the stress between the hooks caused it to collapse on itself. I think I have solved this problem now by making things in a single casting, but I learned from that exchange. A former employee of Y-Que commented that anyone that buys anything from us at the store should know it is experimental, or as she said it, "BUYER BEWARE".

My final batch of work does feel more complete than all the batches before in that I am photographing it and then using the photos to make other items like coasters and mousepads, which may sell without damage or risk to life and limb. I put a new display up in the front window of the store in Los Angeles, but can't bring myself to call it a "show" as it is only 4 pieces that survived, 3 broke in transit. I could make these pieces less fragile by added a back layer of polyester resin and/or epoxy to strengthen the shell. Or I could mount the fresco in a frame of wood that creates a bumper for the piece, but these both add complications, take time and cost money. Frome an artistic standpoint I have to commit to the concept and think of the work as if the generations that are a result of a piece are the piece itself and it does not really matter if a few things break along the way. More to bury.

Advancements in our 3-dimensional world

2-dimensional work has always been my prison. I've worked with photography and the literal interpretation of the world through photo chemistry and bits of silver has always captured my imagination, but by rendering photographic prints in rectangular flat 2-dimensional surfaces never seemed to release anything more than a portion of it's being. Sort of how we only use a portion of our brains for thinking, there is a pent up energy inside photos that is screaming out at us, but we cannot see it except on certain occasions when our mind is somehow fully engaged in a piece of work. Screenprinting has been my craft over the last 25 years that has taken up most of my professional time and as a result I have learned a fair amount using the oversized films and basic colors to put ink onto shirts in a photographic way. Over the last 2-5 years, off and on, I've been merging my printing skills with plaster and castings to come up with a new form of wall art which I call Photo-Fresco.

Over the last few weeks I have broken out of my prison and am on the verge of having fully realizing the potential of this new craft to create 3-dimensional pieces using resins, epoxies, gypsum based plasters with acrylic polymers, spray paint and vinyl to pull out imgages and turn them into objects. The question I have now is if wall art is the right thing to make or if I should reduce this pieces down to simple magnets and charms to make them more digestible to the consuming public. I like the ideas behind displaying prints and pieces on walls, or even selling them in my store, but it is a tall challenge to sell prints without a reputation. Whereas magnets are marketable at $5-10 and they can still be displayed in homes to keep the ball rolling while I work out the details on larger pieces. Larger pieces are more fun to make, but I can only do so many at a time and working smaller, like with pendants and charms moves my production capacity up ten to twenty fold.

The simplest way to make the analysis is to say if I sell one piece for $100, which may takes months, could I sell twenty pieces for $5/ea over the same period of time and not have to worry as much about breakage, storage and the problems with display? I have been testing some adhesives around town using a combination of double sided sticker paper and some pressure sensitive adhesive on the back and to my surprise the items I have placed around town have survived for several weeks in the weather, hot and cold. This is a positive for the flexibility of small things to be displayed in many different environments as stickers versus magnets. At least my mistakes can be gotten rid of if they are small by random postings, as compared to the larger pieces that have to be carried to a storage unit and hidden forever, or until I stop paying the rent. So it seems a combination of stickers, magnets and charms is the way to go, for now.

Down the rabbit hole and it's lined with bricks

I've gone down the rabbit hole and the walls appear to be lined with bricks, gold bricks, copper bricks, bronze bricks, steel bricks and brick bricks. Each turn of the corner shows a new type of brick that can be made. I've made a golden brick panel, that to me resembles the yellow brick road, only I call it a Yellow Brick Wall. I also made a copper brick panel that I painted with an acid wash and quickly saw the patina effect come to life. I don't have much control over this effect, but I am using a veneer of copper so the actual finish is a true patina, whatever that is. I made a flat panel with a mixture of Forton MG and a Shimmer Gold that was muted in the Gypsum, but made an amazing light wood effect. Having more choices on the final effect for these pieces is not making my life easier, but I am getting away from the plastic type finishes that I have been getting with epoxy coatings and uv spray finishes.

Pardon my departure from techniques to

Today I am going to focus on sealants and bonding frames to brick wall piecees.

Nonolith - Defined

A good story tells itself, so in a nonolithic sense I don't really need to write this definition. Since I can't really define something that doesn't exist there is no way I can mess this up. Broad thinking isn't required to grasp the idea of Nonolith, since we live with the concept of less all the time. Nonolith is just the extreme of having less, which is something most of us are used to in our everyday lives, and by applying the method of coping with less you can quickly get to the meaning of Nonolith. Nonolithic is an attempt to release anxiety that is given to things with meaning, with Nonolithicism you can recognize easily that meaning is inherent to existence in objects as well as living things and through time. Nonolithic is not the absence of meaning and the acceptance of nothingness, but the wholistic incorporation of meaning into the simplest of things, our being. Welcome to Nonolith.com - where all is none.

Monolith - or Nonolith

I have now conceptually linked the bricks that I have been making into the concept of the monolith from Stanley Kubrick's Space Odyssey 2001, but in a different way there is no reason to have any more meaning put into this concept. I have extended my rationale to the point that it does not matter what is made, because it is inherent that the understanding and concepts of our times are contained by it's mere existence. From this I have felt a sympathy for the lowly brick in it's anonymous form, but a respect in it's durability and recognizable form. Instinctually I have used my skills to recreate this object in many different ways that would be presentable as a piece of art or artifact of our times, by it's mere presence. So to come back to the underlying meaning of the shape and contextual being I am surprised by the paralells in mysterious symbolism that the Monolith from the movie Space Odyssey contains.

Today I handed a brick sticker to the guy I buy my art materials from, Arty at Douglas and Sturgess in Richmond, and he thought that if he peeled away the sticker a brick wall would appear. I told him it was just a brick sticker, like one brick and then he looked at the other side of the sticker, the brick side, and got it. That's all it is, a brick and a sticker combined. No more, no less. But somehow I feel that my concept is meaningful in that the object contains all of the information, like a database of my work, in it's being. The pigments, the color, the screen printing, the attempts at durability, the texture, the flexibility, the self-promotion, the rectangular shape and so on... Maybe I need to stick one of these on a satelite and have it launched into space to complete the mission, but it really may not be mhy responsibility to worry about that. I just have to keep making the brick in whatever form attaches itself to my brain.

Today I made a brick stencil and cast a panel of red plaster, Tufstone, then spray painted the lines on the textured surface. I wasn't overwhelmed by the effect, but the fact that it worked made the experiment a success. I also cast a batch of eight pieces last night and have now made eight frames to connect to the castings. I move into this direction without hesitation even though bonding has been a consistent problem all along. I think the epoxy will hold the frames to the printed brick panels in a strong and durable way and by batch processing a group of these it will simply mean that it has to work, or I will have eight chances to make it work instead of just one. The last time I made a batch of 8 pieces I ended up with only one working piece, C'est la vie, the others became stickers, so it wasn't so bad. My monoliths are very thin and they come with an adhesive backing.

How long would I go on before I simply read the ads on my own pages

I finally read some of the ads on my pages and since the ads relate to the text that I have been writing it appears that faux brick and brick panels are quite common in the construction industry. I am not surprised, but I am surprised by the way that I now have these items being promoted on my own pages. Is this a part of the new interlocking world we live in where the information and products that you need simply come to you if you just list your thoughts on a blog? Maybe.

I have been working on my fresco brick panels for some time, but I am sure that my techniques are different that what the professionals are using, but the end result may not be as spectacular as I have imagined when you consider what is for sale already online. The brick panels shown online fit together and can be assembled for use in a way that I won't ever be able to achieve, as well as, the realism that they convey is better than a real brick in many ways. The materials that the faux brick walls are made of appears to be polyester resins, which isn't a plus, but for production I am sure that it makes a lot of sense to use those types of resins.

Does this dampen my motivation to continue to create the brick pieces that I am making? Not really. I am simply moving in a direction and it doesn't really matter what I am making so much as there is a theme and if anything it reinforces the practicality and usefulness of faux brick in the real world. The last thing I would want to do is to make a useful brick interior or exterior wall that would actually be in someone's home. By seeing successful companies that are already in that business I can remain focused on the artistic aspects of my craft and leave the business to the pros.

I did notice that some of the brick panels are available in a fireproof, or Class A rating material, at an extra cost. I wonder if these brick panels are made of the hybrid plaster materials like the Forton MG, which is less flamable than the polyester resins. All along on this project I have felt like I was being pulled back into my boat building days and the materials that these companies that are selling the faux brick walls are using seems to support that idea. Essentially they are plastic shells made in a mold, painted and sealed. Although I am interested technically as to how they are made, it's most likely no more glamorous than how I make a t-shirt. The weight of these brick panels isn't that great either, which is a plus and if I had to make a bunch of brick panels I'd probably end up making them the same way, or just buy them from the company and slap a frame on them myself.

If I wasn't so distracted with making my own stuff I could see a way to use their brick panels in a practical way, like the previously mentioned spray paint wall or some such realism versus craft endeavor. However, I am way too gone for that, the brick has taken over my being as an object that hardly represents a brick any more. It's just an idea. A rectangle, a red outlined box, a simple thing, sort of golden rectangle, but not, a monolith.