Portia Chapman Makes Over 800 Bricks

Here I am making my bricks for my installation “Blossoming Beyond the Box.”  I tried different materials and found that Hydro-Stone was the best product to use.  It is an amazing product.  It is more durable and less porous than other plasters that I have used.

What I did was pour the prepared mixture into a brick mould that I acquired from Home Depot.  It is actually a polyurethane faux stone siding panel.

I new they were dry when a puddle of water settled to the surface.  It is important to note that Hydro-Stone heats up really fast, so I used room temperature water.  Once, I used hot water and it became too hot to touch.

To create bricks that were all different from each other, I roughly brushed Vaseline into the back of the form before pouring in the Hydro-Stone.  They turned out so nice and smooth.

This may sound labour intensive, but it was a lot less work than applying the bark pieces over the plastered pipe that I used to make the tree.  I gathered the bark from ditches.  I did not take it from live trees.  In total, there were over 2000 small pieces of bark that were glued on using a hot glue gun.

This project took a lot of time and effort, but it was well worth it in the end.  If you have not used a product like Hydro-Stone, I highly recommend that you try it for your next plaster project.  Note: I am not sponsored by Hydro-Stone.

I hope that you find “Blossoming Beyond the Box” meaningful.

Po

Contact

Belleville, Ontario, Canada
portia@loveartbypo.ca
613-779-7975