So many calls, so little time

I turn down 2-5 jobs a week for instant printing jobs, but just don't have the time. The problem is that usually the job becomes more complex than it seems and although transfer technology and printing transfers seems easy, there is no accounting for the shirts required to be thrown away before the customer is happy. As such, I am testing a whole new batch of heat transfer t-shirt, mousepad and coffe mug papers. Report to follow.

Back to real work - Laser printing and transfers

My entire enterprise and attempts to create something new and different could be avoided if I just worked with the methods that already exist. The techniques of transfering images to products is an industry in and of itself that I have sidestepped over the years. Evey so often I try transfer papers and materials and see if things have changed. I picked up a new laser printer, a Samsung for only $170 and am going to test it with the laser printing papers that I have for t-shirts, mousepads and coffee mugs. It's not photo-frescos, but if these papers work they will provide me with income and products to sell until the rains end and I can get back to messing up prints with plaster.

The Magic Touch paper is from a German company and cost nearly $5/sheet. I've been dying to try this stuff, but it is a mutli-step process. I'll be back with info later on how it works.

The clouds have gone away

I mixed a new batch of plaster, longer drying time, but had no success. A day like today is a day to forget. More mess and less results. Basically this was an off day, but I thought about how to make the cloud type images fixed into a mount that may preserve their shape. It's risky, but I think I will tint some plaster blue and pour around the cloud in a frame to mount the image securely. The final result may be a sky type effect with puffy clouds suspended in a field of blue. For now the clouds have gone.


The risk of doing a double pour is that the new layer will seep under the side with the image and block the graphic. It would be best if I pour the blue before I separate the original print, but I only want to add the blue plaster to images I plan to keep. My present state wants to throw all my samples and rejects, but for a few, into a trash bin, clear the decks and start anew. I can't get back to painting when I am in the middle of a bunch of casting. Ideally I would split the task to different locations so that I'm not trying to do too much at one place.

Puffy Clouds appear as frames to hold iconic Fresco images

I left off last night with a reference to making the vague the obvious. It sounded good, but I didn't really think about what it meant. I think it means that I can take something and make it into a kitschy t-shirt or a simplistic joke, but as I have struggled with the Fresco printing technique I keep finding new meanings for the direction that I am going in. Now I have gone on and did it again.




I have been suggesting that these iconic images are ghost of the real people and that through this process I am pulling their visual spirit back into these works. I also suggested that these were temporary in that I am no longer working with frames and the result is a super fragile piece that is only around long enough to photograph it, but noooooo. The new shape has taken on a simplistic and symbolic form of the puffy cloud.





What better shape to carry spiritual images of classic icons on than puffy clouds? Even I think it is beyond obvious to the level of stupid, but I can't deny the ridiculous symbolism and the process by which I have come upon it. Now I am going to be forced to keep the originals and figure out a method to hold the fragile shapes longer than I intended and potentially these are the final form for these pieces and this effect. Check out this group of seven photofresco prints, in cloud form.

When all else fails try voodoo...and a little wine.

There is a reason why I am accepting all of these formless approaches to this craft of photo-fresco icon regeneration. Since nothing in the normal realm of experimentation can give me control of the results I am resorting to esoteric rationalizations for my methods. Today I breached a new level in conceptualization. While consuming large quantities of wine and working myself up to attempt a mass fresco casting of seven frameless images I decided to share my wine with the plaster. These are my friends, my only friends the images. I dipped my finger in the glass and dropped three drips into the approximate gallon of freshly mixed juice. Physically the wine did not change the color, but in spirit the wine represented the blood of life and a drink for my homies to make them want to appear again. Did it work? Not so much.

I used glass as my flat surface and I was able to look at the images before I pulled them from there monoprint positions. They still seemed like perfect duplications of the originals so I added water to the back side of the plaster to force the images to spread. For some of the images it may have helped and for others it simply made them darker. I am having the most trouble getting a spiritual print of Van Gogh and Frida Khalo. I've made over 10 prints of Van Gogh and nearly 30 of Frida and I don't seem any closer to success than I was at the first one. It may be that I am working from painted portraits and not photographs. It also may be that they have been dead much longer than the other icons I am working with. On a humorous note I have gotten a much more potent image of Ultraman, but Einstein has no essence in the latest print. JD Salinger is anothe bitch to print and I may have to stop here since his face is sullen and non-descript. Still it is hard to drop any character from use until I feel I have drawn into the hardened rock the feeling of their being. It's as though I am beating a drum and calling into the dark.

I don't know what I am asking for but once it arrives I know that I have it. The fragility of the originals is now a part of the process. By the time a get a decent photo of the casting the edges snap and the image crumbles. In this way I don't feel like I am keeping the spirit beyond a reasonable amount of time for their portrait. The original image becomes pieces once I have the portrait and then I can work with it in duplicate and in 2nd generation printing techniques that will never be referenced to their origin. Somehow this comforts me in that I am not capturing and controlling something that I don't understand completely. My place in this is to channel, not to control. My place is to see with castings that which I cannot create by hand. My place is to translate the vague into the obvious.

Read 'em and Weep - advance in frescoland

I am moving in a direction that I can no longer call forward. I am losing reference to borders and permanence. The last transition towards elusive photo fresco portratiure was the result of having enough frames to cast the images into, which therefore restricted my experimentation. The black and white blurred images in plaster that I have been trying to make have been rectangular as a result of the wooden frames. Essentially this is a formal shape and since I feel more of the essence of the characters that I am entombing it has restricted my thinking about the final graphic, as well as, forced me to keep making frames before I could make my photo-frescos. Now, as I have developed my pouring technique I have realized that I don't need a frame to work in, I only need a flat surface upon which to work. Above you will see the first work done without the use of a frame.



A piece of misinformation I have absorbed from pop icon Albert Einstein is that while traveling the train to Princeton Einstein proposed that he could see in 4 dimensions. Although this may be fiction I have always wondered if this is indeed possible. Now I am playing with fire in that I think I can see the innards of the people whose photographs I print into these photofresco prints. The fact that I am moving away from shape and permanence only makes me feel closer to the idea that I am seeing something more than the two dimesions that make up the visual image. I am pulling from the past the persona of the individuals themselves. This is a spiritual dimension that exist in photographs, but is not conveyed through literal photographic printing techniques. Here is an image of Einstein himself.




Now that I have a clue what I am doing I am challenging my own aestetic in that my rejects may be more on target than what I keep trying to accomplish with these prints. If these images are going to be spiritual, then by definition they do not have to adhere to my constraints on what is visually appealing. My sense of composition and style is irrelevant to the final product and I need to separate my own desire to have a symbolic and good looking image from simply a read on the photographs that I am working with. Much like reading cards, I should not project what I want to see. With this in mind I have a sad looking image of Warhol and a dark image of Bruce Lee.

Things are coming around in the t-shirt world

Affordable Organic tshirts, Made in the USA organic t-shirts, fashionably cut organic t-shirts and stock in organic t-shirts. All of these things seem to be coming around, finally, to where we can offer and fulfill reasonable quantities of organic t-shirts at good prices. To start with check out this Ultra Club organic t-shirt starting at $4.50/ea on white. 5.1 oz certified organic cotton, not bad for the price. Add $1/ea for color t-shirts.

American Apparel still has the best colors available, photos to follow, but the prices are higher. In the $5-7 range approximately.

The Anvil should be coming of age now and although I like the Alstyle t-shirts the organic t-shirts are never available when I need them. I am looking forward to trying the Bayside organic cotton t-shirt and possibly private labeling that brand. The price will be a bit below the American Apparel and the cotton a little thicker and not quite so soft. So stay in touch with the organic pages at t-shirts.org as I relaunch and consolidate the available wholesale organic t-shirts that are currently on the market for spring 2010.