Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Lamination Exploration



Work In Progress


I just returned from a trip to see an exhibition by California artist Mark Bradford. The show was at the Wexner Center for the Arts on the campus of Ohio State University in Columbus. It was a fabulous show and I came home happy to have made the long trek.

Before leaving on the trip I began work on a new exploration. I had never tried lamination as presented in many books on the topic. Lamination is basically a transfer process that can leave all or part of an image attached to another piece of fabric, paper or substrate of some type. Mixed media often use this process and I have done this myself but never with fabric.



Acrylic painting on Masa Paper


I choose to make a painting rather than use photocopies, newspaper or pages from magazines. I used acrylic paint on Masa Paper. This paper is very soft and fuzzy on the face and slick on the back. It is a rather sturdy paper and may not of been the best choice as you will see. The painting was placed face up on my table and covered by polyester voil fabric. I painted a good coat of Liquitex Acrylic Matte Medium over the fabric so that it soaked through to the painting.




Face view of fabric laminated to painting.


As you can see in the above image, it did attach with lots of air pockets which is nice, however, I did not like the milky appearance of the fabric.




Another view of face of painting with lamination.


I flipped the piece over and found that I liked the back much better but it had a very thick layer of paper fuzz which needed to be scrubbed off.



The fuzz is very visible in this shot.





Back of work which is now the Front of the piece and the scour pad.


Scour pads, a stiff brush and lots of elbow grease were used to remove the unwanted paper residue. As I scrubbed, the paint layer that was not attached to the fabric because of air pockets came off. After you apply the Acrylic Medium you allow it to dry and then iron the piece. I had forgot to iron until I had started wetting and scrubbing the piece so I stopped, let it dry and ironed. I could see a big difference in the stability of the acrylic paint layer.



Detail


I really love the details of the acrylic surface. You can see that some of the paint layers have come off revealing the next paint layer.




Detail




Detail


The piece is now hanging on my design wall and I am contemplating the next step.

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Nancy Natale is doing a series of artist profiles called The Questionnaire. You are invited to pop on over to her blog and read the one she has posted on me.

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