Shiny Objects don't make themselves

That's right, Shiny Objects don't make themselves. If they did then my life would be much easier than it's been lately. I've wasted many days testing the various ways of combining images with my photo fresco techniques in order to make pictures and now magnets. Why magnets? Because they are a smaller version of the larger pictures, easier to store, ship and handle and they will cost less and hopefully sell more than my larger heavy full framed photo-fresco pieces. Either way the final product appears the most presentable and durable with a clear coat of epoxy on top of the graphic image and I challenged the fresco process to the other types of materials that can be placed under epoxy as a substrate and the fresco process seems to be superior in many ways.

First off for thickness. All the materials I tested have some dimension whether it is paper or a magnet or a sticker. I have tried all of them, including Japanese Rice Paper, thin Magnets, adhesive sticker paper, vellum, regular paper, acetate and direct print. Texture is important to me and as a result the direct print method is by far the most 3-dimensional of the effects, but since the final coat for the magnets will get covered with a clear coat of epoxy the 3-d effect is rendered useless through the glass-like cover. And since people like the shiny object it may have a greater appeal than the more difficult and interesting 3-dimensional graphic objects. My goal is not to abandon the 3-d Screen Print Painted Frescos, but to use them as an original and then with the photographic image I can duplicate the image part of the design into a magnet, or full framed larger fresco as a marketable piece. The original works often get damaged in transport and may be too fragile anyway for display purposes, but it does keep me in production of the tactile part of the process that I like.

The end result of this testing is that the easiest method is the one that has the fewest moving parts. In this case all of the castings with a final coat requires and adhesive to mount the image to the fresco base which increases the steps and drying time required to get to the stage of applying the clear epoxy coat. I tried polyester resin clear coating some objects, but the fluidity of the resin was not as smooth as the epoxy and the bubbles and ridges did not flatten out like the epoxy did. The epoxy did require more drying time, but it dries without the stickiness of the non-wax based polyester resins. The fresco process allows me to add the image in the casting and therefore the well that is created for capturing the epoxy is deeper and there is not problem with adhesion since the image is embedded into the plaster base itself. Less moving parts.

The problem with embedding the image is that I can't make a bunch of the bases in advance and then add the image in the epoxy stage. I have to know what image I want before I do the initial casting so that I can load the image into the mold. I do have some work-arounds on this topic that may make the process more complex, so I am not going there yet. First I have to finish the testing of the magnets for design and for magnetism too, as there is nothing worse than showing up at my store 2 weeks after delivering a sample set of magnets and to be given a box of broken pieces of plaster that have all fallen to the floor. My best adhesion technique for the magnet seems to also be the same epoxy I am using for the clear coat as I can use the extra in a batch mixed to cover the design and paint it on the back to hold the business card sized magnet to the back of the photo-fresco casting.

The substrate is challenging in that I like the idea of a printed body inside the epoxy that has a structure like the cellular structure of rice paper, or the magnetic base of a magnet or even the vinyl overlay of an adhesive sticker, but the photo fresco does not have a structure besides the thin gel of a layer that is bonded to the plaster on the back and protected by the epoxy on the front. It really doesn't matter if the inside image has a structure if the back and front are protective sealer layers. Shrinkage and Expansion with heat and cold over time may cause some movement of the materials. The wooden frames on the larger pieces does shrink over time as the water evaporates from the plaster, but I have added screen and nails to the casting to create a claw-like grip from the casting to the frame and that should preven the image from crashing to the ground out of the frame at some random moment. This also will allow me to use the castings as something more practical like a table top that can hold weight, like plates, glasses and laptops, as well as, survive spills.

Now that the substrate does not require a structure to be penetrated by the epoxy I can move back to why the fresco process is superior to the mounted image inside a casting process. A thinner substrate requires fewer coats of epoxy to make the final coating smooth and shiny. Evey layer of material acts differently with the epoxy and adhesives and some of them become transparent, like the vellum and the uncoated rice paper. Some of them become splotchy, like the regular paper. Others just require too many additional coats to become smooth, like the magnets which are thicker just by being magnets. A thin gel layer for the fresco print therefore allows for the thinnest possible image layer, that is transparent (thus requiring the white background of plaster), to coat with the thinnest possible epoxy layer to finalize a piece.

May be... art is the by product of the materials they are made with.

silicon. polyester resin. gypsum. dirt. pvc. acrylic. epoxy. materials are what made the final product, so why aren't materials worth the matter. they are. materials are content. art is the by product of materials.

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.