I posted work-in-progress photos of this project here over
the summer, and finished it in August. However, it wasn’t until recently that I
had a decent chance to get some photos of the finished product.
Late last spring I was commissioned to create artwork to
honor donors to a school fundraising campaign.
The school wanted something similar to a tile mosaic piece they had seen
pictures of online for a school in another state, depicting a stylized
facsimile of the building’s façade with donor names in the windows. They wanted the finished piece to be around
30 x 40 inches, and it would hang in the school lobby.
I considered attempting to duplicate the sample with a
polymer clay mosaic, with lettering embossed in the clay tiles. However, after
experimentation, I realized that I just didn’t have the means to emboss scores
of names without going through an incredibly slow and mistake-filled process
and, besides, I am very inexperienced in working with polymer clay.
So I finally decided to create a textured building exterior
using acrylic gel mediums (I didn’t have much experience with various fancy
gels, either, but I at least knew my way around acrylic paints and matte/gloss
mediums.)
I was still puzzled how I was going to do the names, but I
somehow stumbled onto acrylic transfers.
I had never heard of acrylic transfers before, but after a test I
decided it might work well for the task.
I worked on panel, and used wood scraps and molding to
imitate architectural details. The stone
texture was put on with Golden coarse pumice gel sealed with extra gel medium
for durability; the plants are painted polymer clay; and the names are acrylic transferred
photocopies.
Considering both size and complexity, this is probably the
largest commission I have done and the most technically sophisticated project I
have attempted. I am pretty happy with
the results, and the people at the school were, too.
I was very impressed with the Golden gel mediums I used, by
the way. Cool stuff, fun to work with.
