A fresh start….
I have never had an “art catastrophe” happen to me. My fellow artists know what I mean. When the kiln is opened to find something exploded. When the gallery staff opens the crates of shipped glass platters to find they each shattered in half somewhere over the ocean. My catastrophe, unknown to me at the time, was when I decided to try Golden’s Waterborne Varnish with UVLS. I followed the directions. The artwork hung and dried on my studio wall for four months. When the pieces were stored in the gallery’s stash, the bubble wrap stuck to the surface leaving bubble wrap texture permanently in the surface. Pieces were ruined. The only option was to cut them up and put them in the garbage.
Now… a fresh start. Unrelated to the catastrophe, I decided to use Ampersand’s Hardboard as the backing to my next pieces. I bought myself this fancy battery powered jig saw to cut the shapes.
I use a fine gauge saw blade - so fine that sanding is not necessary. It’s kind of fun. The panels are museum grade, and I still use museum glue (neutral ph) to adhere the museum board to the panel. Then, I’m ready to choose a palette of colors and get started.
The panels max in size at 24x36 inches. This is slightly smaller than my previous max size of 32x40, but I am ready to work a little smaller. I’m still thinking and sketching. I’m almost ready to start again, and I will never use that varnish again!