Manifesto - De Photo Fresco - Art vs Construction

I have to review my list all of the reasons why I have continued to work on my self-named, "Photo-Frescos" from time to time to recall what I am doing. Call

it what you want, but the original concept is lost inside the complexity of the process itself and unless I enumerate the benefits of what I am after in the

final product, then I can't quite recall why I am so deeply involved in the product that I am making now.

Durability. Durability can mean many things,

but to me it means more than archival permanence. Archival permanence is for items that are kept in relatively controlled environments. I have lost too much

work to water damage, mildew, rodents, wind and slow erosion by sand. I have watched work dissolve and change colors. I have seen my pieces melt in the heat

and dissolve in the rain. Durability means having a fighting chance at survival in relatively harsh conditions without excessive coatings that require

maintenance of their own. Cave drawings and outside murals are underlying influences and weather is not a friend to outside art.

I work outside and often leave my pieces to fight for survival as a part of the process. Every time I drop a plaster piece and it breaks, I shrug and pick up

the pieces accepting the break as if this is a part of the natural progression of things and it is. I enjoy sometimes gluing back the work to make faux

mosaics, but the glue will only create a new weak link in the final product, so I have moved away from this technique as an exercise in stupidity. I would

like to think that my new work can withstand a fall of 3-5 feet and come out looking pretty good. The wooden frame around the outside is like a bumper and

except for a ding or crack on the inside of the image I think these pieces may take more than a few whacks with a hammer to break them down. This is in sharp

contrast to my work a few months ago that can be snapped with an accidental bump or my heavier pieces that could kill someone if they fell on someone's head.

I do worry about this and only sell my pieces with a disclaimer about hanging them on walls, just not over your bed where you sleep. Thicker is desirable as

an imitation of a wall, and the potential durability of thicker items should be better than thin layers of ink on paper or even paint on canvas. Nothing made

with an ink jet printer or laser printer will survive and even silver photographic prints are subject to the decay of the geletin layers that encase the

silver.

Most of the modern printing and painting processes that we create will dissappear while being stored in garages and storage yards. Our electornic and

magnetic existence stored in hard drives will also quietly dissappear over a few short decades. Sure, even mountains will fall to the ocean, but a thick

strong rock at the core is the only reason the mountain was there in the first place and those types of surfaces will wear down slower than most other

materials. Ceramics are the only comparable items that I feel are truly archival and therefore timeless in a way, but I don't have a kiln and I although I

respect the craft I am not patient enough to go through the drying process. Also most graphics are stuck on with decals which sort of ruins it for me, a

little. The obvious drawback too is the survival rate for ceramics in a fall of 3-5 feet, which is usually not pretty. However, the essence of ceramics is

the underlying crystalline structure being orderly and fixed with the pigments of the print or design on the ceramic as also having reached a state of fixed

a crystalline structure, which in the end results in stronger more durable image that can resist water, dirt and maybe even uv. I suppose this is why

ceramics are some of the oldest artifacts that have been left for us to understand and analyze civilizations of the past.

Wall art and murals have to withstand life as we have to withstand life and the years don't get easier as we age; decay simply goes quicker and the days get

shorter. I don't feel like I am artistically endowed enough to take over walls in public for mural work and my wife won't let me paint on the inside of our

cave, so I have built mini walls by casting in thick wooden frames. I think of it as small walls that have to be strong enough to withstand the same types of

abuse that they might get if they were displayed outside. I've been working with plaster over the last two-five years, but now I have moved to a hybrid

mixture of gypsum that is like plastic, but without the harmful combinations of polyester resins and epoxy. Bonding was also a serious problem when working

with resins. To withstand UV decay I am mixing in metal pigments and atomized metals, cold casting, which results in metallic gel coats that I print and

paint into my mold/frames. Ideally I shouldn't have to coat the top layer of these finished pieces, but I can't be sure unless I let them weather longer to

see the results and I haven't made enough pieces to conclude that they can survive in their birthday suits.

I prefer taking things out of molds that are finished since I usually make things worse by applying more coats of chemicals and I like the feeling of

birthing a piece and it being finished when I peel it from the mold. I used a pressure washer on one piece, which should duplicate the effects of a typhoon,

and the result was a white haze appeared across the surface. Later I coated this is a spray varnish and it dissappeared, but I think the metal washed away

exposing some of the plastic gypsum. Frankly rust and patina should be a part of the process, but I don't want to accelerate these processes as that seems

like encouraging the decay that I am fighting to begin with. I even considered accelerating the metallic decay with acids, then cleaning the pieces and

sealing them with coatings to halt the rust/patina effect, but the underlying chemical decomposition would have begun and that can't be good for longer term

survival. Again I must resist exercises in stupidity, decay is the enemy that will take it's toll anyway.

Framing is built in. I hate framing. Same thing with matting prints and finishing anything completely. I've worked my way around this by creating molds that

I make my pieces in that become the frame in two ways. The outside frame is the wood from old screen printing frames, of which I have over a thousand of,

which keeps my cost down and the wooden exterior is a great bumper, holder and mold making device. The inside frame is designed in the mold, therefore it is

made into the print and works as a finished product with grain thereby giving the effect of a classical frame around the print. When I finish a fresco print

I pull the silicon/urethane mold from the wooden frame and voila, it's framed for the public. No extra work.

Originally I wanted to be a Naval engineer / boat builder of sorts for a career, but it's far more daunting a task than I can accomplish, but this is very

similar to boat building with the plug and mold technique. I sold a boat or two, small dinghys in Sausalito made out of wood, and I am glad that I gave up on

that profession before someone actually took a boat that I made out to see. Still in each molded print I make there is a little boat in there waiting to sail

away in the world of someone else's imagination. All of the same durability issues that boats have to endure as objects in the real world is also how I

visualize photo-frescos. I think this has pushed me past basic outside murals on permanence issues. The only difference between fiberglass boat building and

these works is the addition of images and pigments into the gel coats of the molds before the print is pulled.

I still pay rent for a small Cal 20 sailboat that I work on down in Sausalito. I have tried to make it my painting spot, so that I can go down there and

print on half-finished work then leave it to dry inside the small cabin. This yacht harbor also comes with a parking spot and I have converted my truck to a

gallery so that I can justify my boat rent. I've mounted my frescos on the back of the truck to allow them to whether and to show my work to the hords of

tourist that come off the bus right at my parking spot. This is quite an entertaining process that provides me a link to the waterfront and a way to show my

work. I can't help but think that the boat workers in the area may question the durability of the prints and look at the work in passing as a crafstman

would. The gallery is also anonymous in the sense that nothing is for sale and there are no names representing my work, except for my name printed on my

parking pass in the front windshield of the truck. It's like having a gallery and an outside mural at the same time. An interchangable wall built like a

puzzle.

Printability. Graphical representation with screen printing has been a skill that I have learned and used to make a living my entire career. I like the

duplication that screen printing provides, as well as, the sharp lines that I can consistently make. Photographic screen printing has always been my link

back to photography as it allows me to take a photograph where photography does not allow me to go. Also the cartooning effect that happens when printing in

color inks transcends photos back to graphics and paintings. Photography is too literal in many ways. Photography is also expensive and lacks pop.

Photography is a great tool, but screen printing puts the economy and jazz back into prints. The 35mm street photography of the 20th Century and

photojournalism have changed the way we see ourselves and the world. However the early photographers between 1860-1900 with booths, plates and 5 minute

exposures capture the craftsman in me. Making screens and contact prints for screen printing keeps me busy and makes the photographic process seem hands on

versus the silver print development process in photo labs.

Painting. Has never been one of my greatest skills. In fact I am not a very good painter at all. I used to draw, but everything always looked the same to me.

As far as being a painter, well, I respect the craft and have merged it with screen printing following the success of Warhol and Rauschenberg. I used to sell

paintings on the street, up to the point that I sold 3-400, smaller wooden frames kitschy pop culture iconic prints. Mostly in San Francisco in the 90's, but

then I moved on the t-shirt printing and have jumped in and out of screen print paintings over the years. I've played with Black Velvet, montages and have

never truly liked the inks, but it's been a stepping stone. I like the portability and I like selling the things I make. Some of my printing/paintings have

survived well as I used t-shirt inks and they are very durable for a large part of the work. Others just look dull and boring and I have moved the scattering of prints to storage.

Now that I have listed the reasons for making casted metal fresco prints I have to consider the content. The object itself was not the aestethic, but it does have a large influence on the results.

Birth of a Fallen Star

The reason I can't leave home is that I always chase my tail. I'm so busy going back to where I started that I never leave even though I am running and

trying as hard as I can. These stars are representive of that in a multitude of ways. First, my stepfather, whose at-home hobby craftsmanship was an

influence on my practical arts used to make these wooden wall hangings that consisted of a staircase mounted on wood and around it were 1-2 wooden stars. The

staircase and stars had small shelves that would lend themselves to holding very small items like statuettes, but I can't remember anything being that small

that it could sit on them. These items were cut from plywood and glued and what was most memorable about these is that they did not match the cursing son-of

-a-bith mother fucker who made them. This tattooed asshole made these cute little items when he wasn't cursing the world and threatening everyone's

existence. So stars and celestial characters dominated my artistic existence from the very begining as a contrast to reality.

I've done my fair share

of star gazing and I enjoy the relevance that exist between dimensions of space, light, matter and existence as a ponderable oddity that can consume my time.

However, the simplistic symbolism that has come to represent celebrity through stardom is forever a contradiction of relevance. Star gazing truly engages

the imagination whereas star stalking simply entertains the envious parts of the psyche. Needless to say I find myself in Hollywood, 20-30 years beyond my

welcome as a tourist. I did not step off that bus on Hollywood Boulevard at the end of the 70's to just step in the footsteps of the transient famous people

who occupied the squares under my feet. I was there to puke on them and fall down drunk. I was there to sell myself to be like them. I was there to burn in

hell while staring out into the night sky not seeing stars but helicopters blaring a like onto my naked ass.

I heard a radio broadcast of Dennis

Hopper a few weeks before his death as I imagined him hovering over a star with his name on it, honoring his work, as I felt sick to my stomach. I attributed

this infatutation he must've had with a star on the ground with his name on it to the influence the drugs were having on his brain. Obviously he had been on

morphine for too long leading up to the last few minutes of his life the people around him had to encourage him to preversley honor himself in such a way. I

won't go out like that. I won't let my fans down.

The only thing I can figure is that there is nothing symbolically equivalent to a true artist to

associate themselves with to represent their work beyond Oscars and Stars. Now I find myself influenced by these same stars, haunted by their existence and

tortured by their ubiquitousness. The materials that I have been working with have now given me a ludicrous imitation of the celebrity nonsense, but as I am

a captive to symbolism I have no choice but to continue in this path and create these things that I call "Fallen Stars". First to make a star you have to

have mastered making clouds. This I have done, but they are too elusive to be identified with by the masses as they are not intimidative like stars are.

Second, you have to work with bare elements like metals since the hot core of stars eventually cools to the elements that make up the solid matter of the

universe. Three, you have to be ridiculous in being, spirit and dress. My resume speaks for itself in this case, so I don't need to enumerate any

more.

The stars themselves are not intimidating, but are fragile pieces of plaster coated with bronze and steel in a thin veneer design that is

unique. Unique is Unique, why describe that which is obvious. I can make up uses for these items, objet d' art, coasters, flat ashtrays, I don't really care.

Personally I think they are perfect for throwing and smashing. Wipe your ass with them, I don't really care. I know once you have one in your space it won't

make any more sense than I have attempted to make for them because they are simply without meaning. It is all projections of reality, symbolism and purpose.

Why should we expect to be anything more than an ashtray for society or an asswipe for the government. The core of our existence is of course much more than

that, but I am not going to portray anything more than the contrast that they represent to the what and how we view stars. These are fallen stars, these

stars are the people we know, the real people in our lives. We don't have to understand them or use them, but we can if we need. These stars are fragile and

temporary, but made of stone. These stars are an accident in the making, but influenced by what we want to see in life.

Where's the Rock?

With new products come more understanding. The new hybrid gypsum material I previously mentioned it a complete polymer resin. The good news is that it will mix with the metals that I have been working with. The bad news is that it may not be as fine when mixed as the Gouache and Polyester Resin mixtures and therefore I may be limited by the detail that I can accomplish. I have been working with extremely thin layers, so thin that if I give them a scrub I can remove the finish. Obviously the durability of working that thin is questionable, but I appreciate the economy of a very thin veneer. I haven't even gotten to the sealing stage yet as the pieces I have made are still damp, but I can't wait to see if a spray darkens the color and/or enhances the appearence of the metals.

Today was much like any other day and I mixed a new batch of prints and backings on different materials. I also stewed a batch of Gum Arabic in an old school cappucino pot that emulates a double boiler. I have been working with stars using a combination of bronze for the star and steel for the background in black. By working with thinner layers I have come to the conclusion that it may be easier to bind layers of different materials as the thickness doesn't work against the binding effect of the plaster. There is only a short time for the binding to take place and if an image is too thick it may not saturate and bond with the plaster medium, so working thinner potentially gives a better bond with the base material than a thicker image. This also proved to be true in practice.

I browsed the pigment section of Douglas and Sturgess today and noticed some materials that I have looked for in previous experiments, most notably cadmium. I have tried to get enough information to experiment with screen printing solar panels and cadmium was one of the active materials that could assist with making photovoltaic films. The simplist form of a solar cell that I have found was a aluminum wire wrapped on a coated copper plate. These pigments may be printable with cold casting either with polyester resins and or gypsum hybrids. I am going to find some of my materials and see if it is relevant. Conductivity, thin and layered were the keys to creating multi-layered solar films that create electricity. I don't see how this wouldn't work if printed efficiently. The old site I worked on was SolarPowerIsHot.com. I am hoping that I uploaded my data so that I can find the materials list and start anew.

Now we get to the good stuff - Weathering is the Great Equalizer

I've boiled down my efforts to metallic coatings in non-toxic casting materials and although I have succeeded in the short run of making the initial laminate I have reservations about the long term product and went back to researching actual products made to do this. Lo and behold there is a modified mixture of Hydrocal plaster that works as a kit with Mojo and Voodoo to make thin walled sculptures and faux metal castings that can exist in weathered conditions. The magic chemical hybrid plaster cement is called Forton MG.

Read More here:

http://www.artmolds.com/gateway/technique/forton_1.htm

FMG consists of a gypsum plaster modified (hence the abbreviation M.G., for Modified Gypsum) by the addition of plastics and fiberglass. The system involves mixing precise amounts of several products, including Hydrocal FGR-95 from US Gypsum or alternatively, Densite HS from Geogia Pacific (both are gypsum-based cements); dry melamine resin powder; a hardener; a liquid polymer called Forton VF-812, and; fiberglass. These various ingredients are the base to which aggregates, colorants and metallic powders may be added; in which the latter, though somewhat pricey, simulates the look and feel of metal.



and here:

http://www.douglasandsturgess.com/mm5/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=DAS&Product_Code=SC-1245&Category_Code=

If you've been frustrated by trying to put a plaster or gypsum cement sculpture outside only to find that it is slowly dissolving away, then perhaps you should look at Forton MG or Matrix G. Essentially enhancement systems for FGR-95, (see plasters and gypsum cements) these materials not only allow you to use FGR-95 outside, but also will enable you to create sculptures that can look like metal or stone at an economical price with a material that is relatively easy to use. The beauty of these products is that they do not need to be cast solid, but may be cast or laminated hollow with glass fiber reinforcement to create something that is light weight as well. Oh sure, you say, I can do that with cement or fiberglass, which may be true to a certain extent, but try to obtain the fine surface with cement, or avoid the sticky mess with polyester and fiberglass. It can't be done. With the Forton MG/Matrix G systems, we have a go-between material that gives you the best of both worlds. Available in three different sized kits.

Inert is as Inert does - understanding decay

I often think of decay as a natural process. Today I wondered if the visual affects of aging have any effect on the actual dying process, like is someone that looks 80 more likely to die than someone that looks 60, although both candidates for death in this case are 70 years old, I wonder? Decay is understood as a scientific process within the world of uranium and half-lifes, but those ideas are abstract at best. Decay is also understood in an everyday way with things like meat and lettuce, but we don't think of it in terms of half-lives or lives, just simply decay. Zombies are the best example of a real-world half-life decay of a human body, Death accelerates decay, but I digress.

Half-life's are exponential in some sense and in that way I think of them as the same as the relativity of time; All of these explainations are rational explainations of mysteries based on some relevant truths. We can't fully understand these concepts by assuming that there is a relative scale of time that is somehow applicable to our sense of time. Example: If light is a constant and we measure light as some context of a year, but over time our years have changed in duration, which would allow us only to measure light as a constant in years from our current point of the duration of a year. If a year was twice as fast as it is now, then in fact light would be twice as fast numerically in order to remain a constant. This seems obvious to me, but I do have trouble explaining this to others.

As we measure decay there seems to be an attempt at making decay relevant to the thing itself. This makes sense since a half life for me is different than a half life for someone who is going to live twice as long as me. However the acceleration of half-life's as a rule of thumb is suspect, nonetheless, I did not start this diatribe to discuss half-lifes, but to understand decay. Unstable objects decay faster than stable objects. We are all nuclear objects in some form or another, albeit static rocks of living beings. My previous arguement that plastics will dissolve is reinforced by this concept that inert substances last longer because they are not decaying in the same way as hybrid polymers and compound chemicals do.

My brief studies in mineralogy taught me that the structure creates the item and the completeness of the structure is what is a visual representation of the inertness of the item itself. This non-binding effect of inert materials therefore creates minerals and minerals are by definition inert and subject then only to atomic decay, extreme heat and smashing into smaller pieces. Smaller pieces is where I come in and by getting minerals in very small, atomized, pieces I can bond them in a gypsum glud type of cement and continue their decay in an organized aestechically pleasing way. These minerals, metals, are as inert as I can get and by definition they are UV coated, which is the weak point in acrylics.

Now I can atleast have a discussion on the relevant point of decay if I understand the materials I am dealing with like Steel, Aluminum, Copper and Bronze. The binders are subject to decay before the materials that make up the image are. Also by definition there is no binder that can hold these items except gravity. By understanding this I have a newfound respect for silver print photography since the actual black and white image contained in the fixed geletin is silver particles which are not subject to decay, but the paper and chemicals that bind silver prints are subject to decay and are not simple. The gist of my understanding is that complex chemicals will break down faster than simple inert chemicals and if you want archival then you have to go inert.

Patience is what I need, but I can't buy that in a store.

Indeed I would, if I could, but I can't and my experiments suffer as a result. I've succeeded now in getting a layer of colors to adhere to the plaster with a combination of pigment and metal powders on a simple layer of paper. The many other materials I have tried have had mediocre success, but I think it is because I have failed at being patient enough to allow them to fully dry. I think that as the mixture of pigment and binder dries it would be sucked into the plaster as the plaster dries. I know this is just conjecture, but when I pour the plaster there are often puddles of water on the top and sides and I have a feeling it is sucking the water through the plaster as it bonds with itself and the water is forced out. Since the Gouache is also holding water as it dries the water would be sucked from it too and that is the bond that would contain the print in the plaster.

My concern is that by waiting too long the gouache will rebind with the paper or substrate that is is printed on. I have never gotten a consistent result, but I feel that a semi-wet separation in the past has benefited the transfer of the image to the plaster, at least when I am dealing with other inks that are migrating into the plaster. Often when I have waited too long like more than an hour, I get the inks only half separating. Sometimes I have done extrememly wet pours on purpose to get a bleeding of the image and by oversaturating the materials I get effects that suck at first, but as they dry the bleeds become accents to the image itself. My goal here is not to get a fluid effect, but to simply transfer a high metal content print into a plaster base that can essentially be a plaster version of cold casting metal.
Why, you ask? Cost and toxicity I answer. I can't afford to work in the world of plastics which require chemicals that are smelly and that without a mask I will get high. The bonding elements of the backing of non-solid pieces creates a range of problems that require a range of solutions that take me away from the work itself. Finally, I am not convinced of the lasting time of plastics. In the back of my head I think that all of a sudden a polymer breakdown is going to happen at the age of 50 or 100 years from now and certain polymers, like acrylics, are going to just dissolve. Heat is another potentially damaging influence and from the way I am making things there would only have to be a separation from the printed surface that may cause the entire collapse of these pieces.

So why go where no artist has gone before. Wait, strike that! Let's assume that there was an advanced civilization long before our time that had reached an extreme level of sophistication, before the bronze age, there was a plastic age, but it dissolved and disappeared and therefore we have no record of it's existence. This explains a lot about things if we simply assume that God was originally manufactured in plastics, but his/her physical presence has been removed because he/she was created in plastic. When civilization rebuilt itself it started this time with clay and worked itself back up to plastics. Plastics are evil and even acrylics may fail in the same way that every other polymer based derivative will. Because of this paranoia I have decided not to take chances and the gypsum based materials like plaster and metal pigments seem like the way to go.

Gum Arabic Goauche Binder aka

Mixing binder to use with atomized metal. I have successfully adhered the bronze and steel to plaster, but I am afraid of the acrylic heat set ink working consistently, so now I am going back to the basic of mixing a clear binder to hold the atomized metals, like the goauche paints that were good at binding. The old problem of making layers bond is now going to be an issue, but If I work with one later at a time and make sure to use mold release I think this will get me to where I want to be. Testing 1,2, 3. I am looking for my old jar of Schmincke Ready-to-Use Gouache Binder (This ready-to-use gouache binder is ideal for producing your own gouache colors in small batches. Just add dry pigment to the binder and mix with a palette knife, using a simple mixing ratio of 1:2.

No longer will you need to produce large quantities of colors. Now it's simple to make new and fresh colors as you need them!

The gouache binder contains gum arabic, dextrin, and a wetting agent.), but can't find it. However I did find a bag of Gum Arabic (Water soluble gum that is used primarily in making water colors and gouache. To use, simply dissolve in hot water in a double boiler until the desired consistency is achieved.
), but it may take up to two days to get it into a useful state from scratch, much too long for me. ROAD TRIP...