Gearing Up For My February Show
Gloss medium transfer lifting from homemade transfer film.
I’ve secured an awesome place to use as a studio for a few weeks. My step-father Paul is between renters in his town house, so for the month of December I’m using the living room as a experimentation space. One of the best things about this gig is that the carpet is going to be replaced at the end of the month so I’m not even concerned with using a drop cloth while painting and spraying gesso and other things all about. I do however have to worry about the newly painted walls so I’ve built a bit of a spray area with some plastic sheeting.
Aside from the studio space being awesome, I have been experiencing some minor successes and set backs. The image transfers I have traditionally done, have relied on a few brands of inkjet paper, all have similar properties that allow the transfers to work, but they also all have the same limitation, none come in sizes larger than 8.5 x 11. I’ve tried calling customer support and in an attempt to reach the manufacturers in order to secure large off cuts from the manufacturing process. Unfortunately these are all major companies that dont have the time or are unable to accommodate a request like mine. So instead I have had to resort to experimentation in order to find another product or to create my own that will allow me to meet my goals. So far a lot of my time has been spent waiting for things to arrive in the mail only to find out that it will not work. Water slide decal paper for example, doesn’t work, I only spent 5 days waiting to learn that.
After my early dissapointment with the water slide decal paper yesterday i took off and followed a few other hunches. Later in the day i was making my own Transfer film, they work, but have their own setbacks, for example the printer hates to feed them, two out of four prints actually made it through the printer! It is also extremely time consuming to make the films so I hit the internet and found some companies that manufacture transfer films! So i’ve ordered a sample pack and i’ll see if they work as well as the ones i’m making. In the mean time I have also ordered higher quality ingredients for making my own films, that way i’ll be safe in the event that the pre-made stuff is a lost cause.
Anyway check out my flickr for updates and photos of me working and work getting done! Maybe even some previews of the work for the show.
