17__Pilgrimage to The Fresco School

I drove out to Los Angeles and visited with iLia Anossov of The Fresco School (Aug 8).  iLia was first exposed to fresco in art school in his native Russia, and now paints and teaches fresco in the US.

iLia standing next to 2 fresco studies on primed plywood (the ligher one is "aged" artifically, whereas the vivid one is not):

The fresco studio:

iLia said that fresco painting does not have to be that expensive.  To save on the cost of slaked lime, one can paint with  2 coats (or even on just one).  He can thinly plaster a previous fresco, and use that for a support.  He can even do practice frescoes with cheap and available Home Depot lime (which has too much magesium for the best buon fresco painting), after slaking that lime for as little as a week (or even less).  Moreover, one might save on dry pigments if he buys them from a masonary supply shop.  In short, students should not be discouraged from painting in fresco, because they can easily start with cheap materials.

iLia painted this fresco on Home Depot lime:

One layer fresco on a burlap-like cloth support:

The important thing is to get a feel for your lime plaster.  Wall frescoes are often painted on 5 layers of lime plaster, but  those layers can work against the artist, if they wick the water out of the top coat too fast, and cause the surface of a fresco painting to dry too fast and crack.  Conversely, if those underlayers are saturated with water, they can keep the surface layer wet for a long time, and painfully delay the painting process.

Moreover, iLia said that one can midst the fresco plaster with an atomizer, during painting and even after the painting is finished, to keep it from drying too fast and cracking.  In fact, misting can make the fresco stronger, as it does with concrete.

If one paints on the fresco plaster while it is still wet, he will mix his pigments with the lime, and the final fresco will suffer dull colors.  However, when the surface is dry enough to absorb the ground pigments, the artist can glaze thinly with color, and the fresco will radiate with vibrant colors when it dries and cures.

Outdoor frescoes which iLia painted in Los Angeles:

iLia was mentioned in Architectural Digest.  Interview with iLia.




 
OTHER FRESCOES IN LOS ANGELES

Fredercio Vigil painted this fresco at SPARC (Social and Public Art Resource Center) near Venice Beach:

(I found Frederico Vigil's mural from this mural list posted online) 

*****

I did not see the Orozco fresco, but note that there are 2 frescoes at Pomona College (the other by Rico LeBrun).

*****

Siqueiros painted a "fresco" -- America Tropical -- in downtown Los Angeles "made of cement rather than the traditional plaster, (which) was completed the night before its dedication on October 9, 1932."  In 1938  this masterpiece was white washed over and forgotten. Now this mural on Olvera Street is currently being restored under a multi-million dollar contract, though it is not yet open to the public (Aug 2012).

1998 reproduction of America Tropical by Siqueiros on the old Self Help Graphics building in East LA:

The Siqueiros mural is currently being restored under this canopy on Olvera Street in downtown LA:

Between the examples of iLia and Siqueiros, I'm inspired to try painting "fresco" on Rocalite, the translucent concrete additive from Mexico. Unlike regular concrete, Rocalite does not set up for 3 hours, giving the artist plenty of time to paint pigments on the surface:

I experimented with the Rocalite hoping to make more translucent concrete sculptures.   Perhaps with this material we can paint a translucent concrete fresco, or even a 3D translucent concrete sculpture with fresco technique.

16__Santa Fe frescoes

I found frescoes painted in the courtyard of the New Mexico Museum of Art in Santa Fe (Jan 7) -- all painted in 1934 by Will Shuster (one of the "5 Nuts in Huts"), except for one painted by Frederic Vigil in 1998 (who also painted the big fresco at the Natural Hispanic Cultural Center in Albuquerque):

"Voice of the Earth":


"Voice of Sipapu":


"Winnowing Wheat":


"Pottery Making":


In this detail, one can see the dotted pounce line of the transferred image, as well as abrupt cuts between the head and the body. Shuster must have painted the head and the body during two different sessions, and thus applied plaster two different days:


Decorative serpent:



"Voice in the Sky":


"Voice of the Water":

Explanation:


Fresco painted much later by Frederico Vigil:


There is also a fresco by Olive Rush in the entrance of the old public library (she painted a fresco at New Mexico State University as well). I will post a picture of this in the future.

01__West Texas or Bust

This blog is a continuation of the "Fresco or Bust" blog, which I wrote in Arizona.

I decided to try fresco again in West Texas, after developing the process in Tucson. The goal this time is to create a proper fresco without cracks, by painting over 3 to 5 coats of lime plaster. In Arizona we only painted over one coat of lime -- the “intonaco.”

Currently I am in Lubbock, helping Ken prepare a fresco panel. However, tonight I will go to San Angelo, to grind fresco pigments into water at the Chicken Farm Art Center. More slaked lime is waiting for us in a storage unit I rented in Midland, Texas. I set this up last December, after packing all the fresco materials left at the Sculpture Resource Center into my Honda Fit, and driving from Tucson to Texas:



Ken has been inspired since viewing the Vatican Fresco exhibition in Lubbock during 2002. I like to think that we are following the tradition of Peter Hurd, who painted the big rotunda fresco in Holden Hall, on the campus of Texas Tech University:



A bust by Glenna Goodacre in front of the Peter Hurd fresco on the Texas Tech campus:


Self portrait of Peter Hurd, plus artist Tom Lea and musicologist John Lomax, at the bottom of the fresco:


WPA fresco mural by Peter Hurd, in the old post office in Big Spring, Texas:


Peter Hurd fresco at the post office in Alamogordo, New Mexico:


Other side of the outdoor Alamogordo fresco:


There is also a Peter Hurd fresco at Los Poblanos near Albuquerque, not far from the huge new fresco at the National Hipanic Cultural Center which Frederico Vigil just finished. Before driving to Lubbock, I checked out Vigil's fresco in the torreon, and also Stephen Michael Bennett's fresco class in nearby Corrales:


Beautiful fresco done by Aimee Martuccio, in Stephen Michael Bennett's workshop:


One of Stephen Michael Bennett's frescoes at Blades Bistro, in Placitas, New Mexico:


I also found inspiration online, from the concurrent Fresco Project at Western Kentucky University. We are working more casually than the university, but I expect to be surprised, and get something nice from our effort.

09__Taos_frescoes

I went to Taos (Sept 30) to see the frescoes in the old courthouse on the plaza, upstairs in the back room. However, this room apparently is always locked up. Therefore, I took the best photos that I could through the windows (perhaps the murals are easier to see in this YouTube video):



In addition to those WPA artists mentioned above, I believe that Frederico Vigil recently painted the fresco shown obliquely on the far right, in the below photo (on that same wall, there seems to be another rectangle reserved for a future fresco):
























Fresco is inherently architectural. I thought the local Taos Earthships could encourage a fresco revival, on their adobe walls.