3-D versus 2-D, Whatever!

Why are 3-dimensional products more interesting than 2-dimensional images? Simply put they have more dimensions. I have worked with flat images for so long that I am drawn to the objects that I can make as 3-dimensional products in a way that infatuates me. The fact that the 3-dimensional products are made from 2-dimensional images only enhances the character of the products themselves because it is as if I am using the same underlying graphic technology to make the 3-d objects. This transition is what keeps pulling me back in and creates the inertia that keeps me moving forward on these projects. My brain has been twisted inside out as I keep making modifications to the process of developing a wide range of products and each product has some x-factor that relates to the earlier steps. Today I tried to reduce the concepts to a catalog sheet or drawing of the things that I can make using these photo-fresco techniques and they are legion. I don't even consider the final products photo-fresco in the original context of the phrase, but because the methods of the photo-fresco processes brought me to this point I am keeping with the original catch phrase, photo fresco.

The Product is the Mold

I have been trying different mold making techniques and a variety of mold making materials including plaster, silicone and urethane. The Silicone is usually my favorite because of it's ability to capture detail and resistance to sticking from other materials poured into it like polyester resin and epoxy. My urethane molds seem more sensitive to sticking, but I was surprised to find that my urethane mold may capture as much or more detail than the silicone that I recently used. I purchased a small amount of silicon rubber last week in an attempt to make a few small molds for the cold cast pendants that I have been making. I poured the 2 part mixture and everything looked fine, but each piece had a small air bubble in the set rubber and this carried over into the casting of the final pieces. This was a result of the thickness that the silicon rubber was and it was a fast setting batch of Silicone, Smooth-On, is the brand. There isn't really anything I can do about the bubbles and it is quite annoying since Silcone is expensive to begin with. As I pondered my new problem I did a second cast of the same items and although it was better, I still have a few problems. The viscosity of the silicon isn't perfect for everything, so I will need to find a new product for getting into cracks and crevices. When I poured the silicon I stared for 30 minutes watching each air bubble come up to the surface and helped pop them thinking that must be the last one. My next attempt was to use some urethane rubber that I happened to have as a backup and make a mold from a first generation print so that I would be getting the best casting possible from a new item. It appears that because the urethane was a thinner mixture that the bubbles release more easily and the 2 to 1 mixture flowed more evenly over the items and filled the cracks and crevices much quicker. The urethane rubber leaves a oily feeling when it pops out from the original, but that should only help with making a casting. I quickly sprayed down the new mold an poured a mixture of polyester resin gel coat with an epoxy back fill to make a relatively thin relief that I can cut and use as an applique. I have not pulled this item from the mold yet, but I am looking forward to getting it this morning. The composite between polyester resin and epoxy is also a solution that appears as a result of two problems. One, I ran out of polyester resin. Two, the polyester resin penetrates the crevices and fills the voids made in these small molds easier than the epoxy does. The epoxy suffers from the same problem that the silicon does, even though both of these casting products have strong benefits once they are used. I know that having a vacuum pump system to draw the air bubbles out of the setting materials would improve my final results, but I would like to avoid going that far in making the process more complex. I enjoy mixing and pouring the chemicals, but having to set up a vacuum system is just another bunch of things to deal with. I can use my originals as molds themselves, which isn't a bad idea as the best results in my final products that I have gotten have come from casting in the original. I have been mixing in some flexible polyester resin into my regular resin and the end result is a less fragile piece that has some of the characteristics of the epoxy castings. This helps with the removal of the casting from the original, but in the end the original gets destroyed and then I have to make a new original which involved additional work. My last batch of castings made it through 5 - 10 sets of castings before the detail started breaking away from the original and lodging into the cast pieces. This is something that can be expanded on because it had an interesting look, but from a simple casting perspective the 5-10 uses is not quite enough to justify the work in making the original mold. My problem with the mold may have come from switching from my polyester resin mixtures to epoxy after 4-5 castings. I usually have better results with materials releasing with the epoxy so I didn't fret about as much mold release as normal, but either the epoxy gripped the mold detail in a different way than the polyester resin does, or the use of polyester resin in the mold made the epoxy bond stronger to the original. Assuming the later is the case and that there must have been a latent residue of polyester resin in the mold from prior use, then I can assume that the bond between the epoxy and the polyester resin is superb. This takes me back to the use of polyester resin as the gel coat material for strength and detail with the epoxy backing for durability and some flexibility, as well as, superior versatility in bonding with other materials like wood or cement later on.

Success - Failure - Success - Failure

Thus the cycle of progress is a constant stream of success and failure. The successes are invigorating, but often a piece cannot be recognized as being a success right away. Often it takes finishing a piece and then looking at some item again at a later date and then you may realize that something worked. Typically this is how my successes occur. Here are a few scanned and buffed emblems of the Mayan Sun God sticking out his tongue.

New Mayan calendar, same as the old Mayan calendar

Here are some cold casted emblems that I need to finish.

It's not easy being green

I've moved on from the Chicken Head as a result of the pressure to make something that can be practically used and sold. The Chicken Head photo fresco is a good piece, but the fact is that it is heavy and although it is durable, it is somewhat fragile. The size is also larger than life in that it is hard to ship and display a 10 lb 16" X 20" frame. Just the fact that if it fell on your head you would most definitely suffer a concussion. Therefore I have scaled down my work, again. I reworked a batch of designs and made a new mold with 2" X 3" pieces with a more detailed relief that is photographic. I was unable to buy the expensive silicon that I needed so I worked with my old school techniques to turn high contrast photoshop files into rectangular reliefs. Then I poured polyester resin with atomized metals to create a few batches of cold casted pieces, 18 at a time.

The piece shown here, Available for Filming, is from a t-shirt design that I sell at my store in Los Angeles and is a good example of the detail that I can get using these photo casting techniques. I poured this item using copper and buffed it up to show off the metallic gel coat. In some cases I dipped the piece in acid to speed up the patina process and although it works pretty well, I can't control how and where the piece turns green so I think I am going to stay with this sort of shiny metallic effect and let nature do the work of weathering over time. Here are a few more image of these rectangular small pieces that can be used as refrigerator magnets.

Chicken Head Released into the Wild

Back in the day I used to work at Flea Markets and although I may consider myself an artist of sorts, I've never been successful enough to be in a gallery or get any respect, besides printing t-shirts. I've always looked on my flea market days as The Beginning of my business career, even though it isn't glamorous. Still that's the way it happened and today I just can't bring myself to sit in the sun and sell stuff, even if I wanted to. Lately I've been buying and selling stuff on Craigslist and although it is a pain in the ass I kinda consider this a modern version of the flea market without having to sit in the sun. Today I launched an item for sale on Craigslist to bring my photo fresco pieces out from cold and into the sun with a Chicken Head Photo Fresco listing linked here: http://sfbay.craigslist.org/nby/art/3084344028.html I don't expect much, but I was very excited by the floor I made today using a bunch of my photo fresco pieces and just wanted to show how versatile these things are.

Balancing a load - Where and how to use brick panels

I have cast, coated and dried a batch of brick panels, but don't know how to use them. Originally I was just going to use these panels as backs for other pieces so that the frames I was making looked finished on both sides. Now that I have these pieces done I feel they may be a waste to use them on the back of other pieces that I have not yet made. The end result is a set of brick panels made from a variety of cements with depths ranging from 3/8" to 1/2". The brick patterns go in a vertical direction on half the panels and horizontal on the other half. The panels are 13" wide by 16" tall and are basically large flat cement tiles. I have coated the cement with two layers of polyester resin with atomized steel mixed in to help resist weathering.

The resin top coat would allow me to paint or bond other paint or coatings to the top and this seems to be the direction I am going with finishing the pieces. I have a couple of sets of stencils with mugshots and my thought is to coat an area with a light background color with spray paint or polyester resin and atomized aluminum to create a grey tone, then spray paint the stencil on top of the grey area. The problem with this is that I am wasting all the black area that I spent so much time finishing. The ease of painting the panels before mounting them should solve some of the problems associated with working on the panels when they are already made in the frames. I just feel it is a shame to cover them with a bunch of paint after doing all the work to make them black.

The frames themselves are not super strong and can crack if they were stepped or if they were dropped from a few feet off the ground. I do think they could be used as small table tops for outside use if I go back and mount them in the wooden screen printing frames. The reason for making these outside the frames is that all of the casting materials that I used, cement, gypsum plasters and hybrid plasters with acrylic and fibers mixed in. Still there is always a loosening of the material from the frame when I don't reinforce the pieces and anchor them to the frame while making them. I started using this as a technique with the cements and mortars since they shrink even more than the plasters and I have been using the frames as molds with the entire panel popping out after a couple of days.

I am hopeful that the cements are more resistant to weathering than the plasters, but still I went ahead and coated the cement panels with the polyester resin coating to see how that worked. I was hopeful that the coatings would provide a gel coat like strength to the fragile cement panels.

This may have worked but I can't really test the strength without placing a load on the panels. I placed an unfinished panel on the ground a stood on it and it cracked right away. The surface wasn't exactly smooth and I weight about 200 lbs, so it wasn't a fair fight. I do think these panels can hold 10 to 30 pounds no problem and if they were set in with a backing material then I don't see why they couldn't hold a larger load. Again, I don't have a reason for making them this strong, but I keep wanting to make these panels into something useful and if they can carry a decent load then they may be useful as a flooring or table top. As a wall or side panel or decoration they don't need the additional strength. If I put a lattice or thin rebar in the material when I cast it then I can increase the strength of the panels significantly, or at least when they crack the pieces would not separate as easily from each other.

I know that tile is not reinforced with a lattice and by setting it on top of strong materials that do not bend and filling the areas around the tiles with grout creates a water resistant base without have a reinforced tile itself. Any tile by itself would crack and break with even the slightest drop or hit with a hammer, yet tiles work great once they are installed, so I do not think it will be necessary to put a rebar lattice structure into the brick panels as long as I provide the proper backing and mounting surface and fill any voids so there is not movement below the pieces. Since tile is such a good material I can't help but wonder why people don't also use tiles on the outside of their houses? Wow, I did a search on this topic and of course there is much more to it than I imagined, but exterior tiles are a huge business, although it seems stone finishes like marble and rock are the most practical and elegant application for exterior tiles. Bonding is going to be important so my next step may be to create a mechanical and a chemical bonding method for attaching my brick tiles to an exterior wall so that I can sit around and watch them weather.