NEWS

Building Four Fabrication Expands Their Production Facility

We are pleased to announce that one of our valued customers, Building Four Fabrication, has just doubled the size of their production facility from a 6,000 square foot facility to now, an over 12,000 square foot production facility in Chamblee, Georgia.

BLDG4 was founded in 2014 by its owners, who have a combined 30+ years of experience in the fabrication industry and build everything from small art pieces to entire large scale exhibits. They provide specialized work in sculpture, painting, woodworking, metalworking, and carpentry. Some of their past clients have included museums, visitor centers, hotels, restaurants, and theme parks. 

Please join us in wishing them well as they settle into their new space and check out their website to see their full range of project services.

Here is a link to their website:  http://www.buildingfour.com

Weekend Aqua-Resin Sculpture Workshop with Rand Hardy at The Art Students League

Rand Hardy’s next Aqua-Resin workshop at The Art Students League in will be held on Saturday, September 16th and Sunday the 17th, 2017. During the two day intensive workshop Mr. Hardy’s focus will be on the various methods of casting and building with Aqua-Resin.

The workshop starts at 10:00 am and ends at 4:30 pm on both days. The Art Students League is located at 215 West 57th Street in New York City.

For enrollment information and more workshop details, please click HERE.

Aqua-Glass Chopped Glass Fiber is now Aqua-Glass Cut Glass Fiber

We are always happy to listen to advice from our customers: A recent communication regarding our Aqua-Glass fibers suggested that our calling it “chopped” was misleading and discouraged customers from trying it. 

Their point, one well taken, is that chopped fiberglass has an established use, quite different from the uses for which our cut Aqua-Glass is intended. Conventional chopped fiberglass, usually offered in ¼” and ½” lengths is often just used as a filler material or more correctly as a means to provide a small amount of strength to a brushable coat of polyester or epoxy.

Our Aqua-Glass Cut Glass Fiber products are engineered for very different purposes. The two longer cuts, 3 ½-1” and 4 ½” are to be used as the principal reinforcing fiber in an Aqua-Resin laminate. Because of correct binder compatibility with Aqua-Resin mixes and the unusually long fiber lengths, they produce substantially stronger laminates than would conventional chopped strand mat. The 3 ½-1” is used for laminates with tight curves and irregular geometry, while the 4 ½” is useful for rapid building of flatter areas or gentle curves. Both may be tamped onto a layer of fresh Aqua-Resin mix with a stiff brush and/or a hard ridged fiberglass roller.

The ½” and 1” cuts are most often used to reinforce a gel coat or for reinforcing undercuts where longer fibers would be more difficult to position. In the case of gel coats, the soluble binder allows the individual glass filaments to separate out and thereby rendering them invisible in the gel coat.

Aqua-Resin Demo at the Compleat Sculptor
Saturday, March 11, 2017 2-5 pm

There will be an in-store demonstration of how to use Aqua-Resin products at The Compleat Sculptor store this coming Saturday, March 11th. It is part of The Compleat Sculptor Saturday Subject series. Our representative, Ethan Green, will be demonstrating how to use the Aqua-Resin system. He will be showing laminating and solid casting techniques including using Aqua-Color and our newest fiberglass reinforcement material Aqua-Axial-2.

Ethan Green is a working artist and an instructor at Rutgers University’s Mason Gross School of the Arts.

Although there is no cost for the demo, please call or email the Compleat Sculptor store to let them know you would like to attend. Here is the LINK to the demo page on The Compleat Sculptor website. Feel free to stop by anytime between 2:00 and 5:00 as the techniques will be repeated during the 3 hour period.

The store is located in lower Manhattan at 90 Vandam Street (between Greenwich Street and Varick Street) and easily reached by subway via the 1 to Houston Street or the C or E to Spring Street. If you have not been there before, look for the red awning on the south side of the street.

Aqua-Resin Workshop at The Art Students League of New York is Scheduled for April 29th and 30th, 2017
 

Rand Hardy has scheduled the next two day intensive Aqua-Resin workshop at The Art Students League for Saturday, April 29th and Sunday, April 30th, 2017. The workshop concentration is methods of casting and building with Aqua-Resin. Mr. Hardy has been making sculpture with Aqua-Resin for more than 13 years and has exhibited his work extensively.

The workshop days start at 10:00 am and end at 4:30 pm. The Art Students League is located at 215 West 57th Street in New York City.

Please click HERE to see the poster with the enrollment information for the upcoming workshop. 

Party Concierge in Sacramento is now selling Aqua-Resin Products

The Party Concierge, Northern California’s premier event decór and design company has added Aqua-Resin products to their retail store which is open to the public. The Party Concierge’s team of artists have been using Aqua-Resin for a number of years for their custom designed props for events and as permanent installments and display projects. Inspired customers will now be able to purchase the products necessary to create their own laminated and hard coated projects and artists of all types in the Sacramento area will have a new local supplier of Aqua-Resin. Do it all yourself or with the design team at The Party Concierge. Scale is no limit for their state of the art machinery and 42,000 square foot fabrication shop and The Party Concierge team are devoted to bringing their customer’s concepts to completion

To take a look at their website click HERE and see the impressive range of work that they do.

Buy Aqua-Resin Introductory Trial Kits in our New Online Store
 

We are now selling Aqua-Resin Trial Kits in our website store. There are three kits available as pictured above and described below.

Aqua-Resin Trial kit - A selection of basic Aqua-Resin products to give the new customer an easy to use introduction to the Aqua-Resin Composite system

Aqua-Resin Cosplay Trial Kit - A selection of Aqua-Resin products picked specifically for introductory or small scale costuming and related activities.

Aqua-Color Tester Kit -  Artist's grade pigment dispersions providing subtle tints to full color saturation. Five ¼ ounce jars, one each of red, yellow, blue, black and white

Please LINK to our INTRODUCTORY KITS STORE page for a full description and more photographs of the kits or to make a purchase. All prices include shipping and handling within the contiguous 48 states. Contact us at info@aquaresin.com for shipments elsewhere.

University of Detroit-Mercy School of Architecture Materials Library

We were recently asked by the School of Architecture of The University of Detroit-Mercy to contribute samples of Aqua-Resin to their materials library. The Aqua-Resin hard samples contributed are a section of a thin walled solid color ornamental architectural casting, a coated foam sample and a multi-color solid cast sample. All of the color in the samples was achieved with Aqua-Color pigment dispersions.

Achille Bianchi, who runs the materials library for the benefit of the approximately 300 architecture students, describes the library as having over 1,800 material samples available to the students for their study.

Aqua-Resin Available at Resale at SAIC
School at the Art Institute of Chicago
 

Aqua-Resin is available for the SAIC community as part of the school’s Resale Center program. The products in the SAIC Resale Center are chosen on the basis of ongoing preferences for specific art materials that may not be easily available to students otherwise. Aqua-Resin is available at the Columbus Resale Center, Room B-031 in the basement at 280 S. Columbus Drive.

ARTICard is the only accepted form of payment at the Resale Centers. LINK to their website.

Each fall we get together to select the image for our holiday card. Typically we agree on a tasteful winter motif.

This year, 2016, our choice of a winter motif is still certainly tasteful -- in its way. But, we selected for this year, this holiday season perhaps needing a little extra help, an image with both humor and a little nostalgia. We hope you enjoy the holiday season and have a Happy New Year!

January Aqua-Resin Workshop with Rand Hardy at The Art Students League
 

The next Aqua-Resin Casting and Building Workshop presented by The Art Students League of New York and taught by artist Rand Hardy will be Saturday and Sunday, January 7 and 8, 2017. Here is the LINK for the workshop details and registration information.

The two day workshop will cover the basics of: pattern making, mold making, mixing ratios, foam-coating, joining of disparate parts, and the painting/patina of finished work.

Urethane Dangers Revealed in $90 Billion Lawsuit

We have been noticing an increased interest in Aqua-Resin as a hard coating for rigid foam. We suspect the reason is this: A $90 billion lawsuit recently filed by the US government against the four major producers of isocyanates used in urethane production. This suit accuses these chemical companies of selling billions of dollars worth of harmful isocyanate chemicals, intentionally concealing their dangers to consumers.

Aqua-Resin hardcoats have been offered for years as a safe alternative to the isocyanate cured urethane coatings. Please contact us at info@aquaresin.com for more information.

And, please view this video on foam coating with Aqua-Resin: 

https://player.vimeo.com/video/185516354

Here is a link on the lawsuit: 
http://www.ecowatch.com/whistleblower-lawsuit-chemical-companies-2005784783.html

Also, we want to thank Monona Rossol, President/founder of Arts, Crafts and Theater Safety Inc., for alerting us, and the rest of our community about the isocyanate issue.

Here is a link to her organization's website and newsletter:
http://www.artscraftstheatersafety.org/  

Introducing AQUA-AXIAL 2™ 
our new fiberglass reinforcement cloth
 

A recent addition to our fiberglass product line, Aqua-Axial 2™, is a binderless, stitched, bias constructed fabric which is extraordinarily conformable, very easy to wet out and remarkably strong in any Aqua-Resin application. Aqua-Axial 2™ is ideal for our customers who prefer using a fabric product to cover large surface areas.  

The fabric is 50" wide. 

Upcoming January 2017 Art Students League Workshop
 

The next Aqua-Resin Casting and Building Workshop presented by The Art Students League of New York and taught by artist Rand Hardy will be Saturday and Sunday, January 7 and 8, 2017. We will provide a link for workshop details and registration information closer to the date.

The Art Students League is located at 215 West 57th Street in NYC.

New Distributor in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, Canada
 

We are pleased to welcome Moose Jaw Makers Supply as a new Aqua-Resin distributor in Saskatchewan, Canada. As they describe themselves, they are a "retail supply store that celebrates and supports Maker Culture."

Email them for more information at: MakerSupply@sasktel.net

May Art Students League Workshop
 

The Aqua-Resin Casting and Building Workshop will be presented on May 21-22, 2016 at the Art Students League of New York and taught by artist Rand Hardy. 

Click HERE for workshop details.

New Alberta, Canada Distributor
 

Aqua-Resin is pleased to announce that we have a new distributor, Gyptek, Inc., located in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. With over 15 years experience in the field, Gyptek Inc. has become a supplier of choice in Alberta for molding supplies and expert advice.

Click HERE for more information.

As color pastes/fluids, compounded with light-fast, permanent pigments, Aqua-Color pigment dispersions are suitable for fine art as well as for various scenic and commercial applications. They are by far, being highly concentrated, the most economical means of coloring Aqua-Resin. And these colorants, since they are our own products, are the only ones available that have been fully tested to be compatible with various Aqua-Resin mixes.

As are all our products, Aqua-Color dispersions are safe to use and non-toxic. And per LHAMA, conform to the labeling requirements of ASTM D-4236 and are certified by an independent toxicologist to have no chronic health effects.

Available colors: red, yellow, blue, black, and white
Packaging : 3 1/2 oz., wide mouth, easy stir jars

Aqua-Resin is pleased to have been a part of One World Flower Festival in Utica's Oneida Square on Saturday, May 9, 2015. For this public art project, the very first one at this location, over 40 sculptural flower globes, fabricated with Aqua-Resin lined the streets of Oneida Square. 

Each original flower globe creation evoked the festival's theme of flowers, spring and Utica's one world diversity.

Thank you to R2G Utica partners Oneida Square Project, Sculpture Space, MVRCR Refugee Center, citizens, businesses, and the participating artists! 

University of Texas at Austin School of Architecture Materials Lab
 

We are pleased to be included as a recent addition to the University of Texas at Austin School of Architecture Materials Lab. The materials lab is a highly regarded, multidisciplinary resource with the largest circulating library of its kind in the world.

Follow this LINK to see our page in the collection.

In conjunction with our Toronto distributor, Sculpture Supply Canada, we are excited to announce our involvement in Kropserkel Inc.'s new project, the re-creation of the "Maschinenmensch" robot of Fritz Lang's historic film "Metropolis".

Aqua-Resin has been chosen as the composite material for the fabrication of the casing of this historic robot . Furthering Kropserkel's dedication to authenticity, we have been working closely with their director, Scott Maple, to simulate the unique bronze/silver metal finish of the original robot.

Originally designed and constructed by Walter Schulze-Mittendorff in 1926 to be worn by actress Brigitte Helm, the original "Maschinenmensch" aka "False Maria" body was inspired at the height of the German expressionist movement and influenced the aesthetic of modern movie robots (such as C3PO of Star Wars.)

You can find further details on the project HERE.

above image: WSM Art Management/Kropserkel Inc.

Instruction Updates
 

We clarify and otherwise change our product instructions on an ongoing basis. Please periodically go to our PRODUCTS page and click on product name for LINKS to the latest instructions for any products you currently use or those you may be interested in trying. 

New York Times Article
 

"Government Says 2 Common Materials Pose Risk of Cancer"   Follow this LINK to the New York Times article.

Two Painter's Journal Articles show Detailed Instructions for Using Aqua-Resin

A Green Approach to Set-Building.............. 

Creating Three Dimensional, Cast and Thin-walled Fiberglass Laminated Props And Scenic Elements with Aqua-Resin®, The Painter's Journal, Fall, 2008

Aqua-Resin® For Coating Carved Rigid Foam and Hardware Cloth Structures, The Painter's Journal, Winter, 2008