I am sorry Nathan, I read your post in the context of the first post - that you were looking for portable panels. This is at the core of reintroducing fresco technique to Canada & U.S.A. Unlike Mexico, there is no real tradition of murals here and even then 99.9% of murals today will be in acrylic or enamel sign paints. So the challenge is/has been to come up with a fresco technique on smaller, easier to manage, easier to market panels. A panel of precast concrete or well cured layers of lime putty, pozzolan and sand would be extremely heavy without reinforcement. It would have to be two or three inches in thickness - a panel 24" by24" by 2" would weigh over 50 lbs, 25 kilos.

The ferrocement panel I decribe would weigh about 10 lbs, 14 with all the putty. The effect is have the white putty on a colored slab, and the slab is irregular cut - it looks like someone went to your country, chiselled a fresco off a wall, and smuggled it back home! This also allows me to paint irregular size sections, not "boxed in" to a visual square.

So, of course a buon fresco on a ancient or new stone built wall is the way to go. Here, nearly all walls are concrete and steel, or brick and wood. People move all the time, if a building or home lasts twenty five years it is most often torn down and rebuilt. Also,too many people want their art from galleries and festivals - to be seen buying art is important to them. These same people often buy homes, or I should say houses, as investments. An original work of art which becomes part of the architecture can be a very valuable thing to leave behind, or it could also be a stumbling block to reselling the house. Ours is a highly portable society, with very little experience in arts/culture - we want demand instant gratification in nearly every facet of our life.

I do have some standalone pieces, but generally I am doing reproductions of the classics, from around the world, in the scale they were originally painted - so I choose 'fragments' of larger frescos. A 24" by 24" "fragment" panel should sell for about $300 - $500. So I have an educational and also businesslike approach - not fine art. The fact that I am reproducing, also gives me the right to repaint and resell the same fragment theme. So this can be quite profitable - until I get tired of painting the same damn fragment each time just because thats what people want. I know, for example, I could sell a "fragment" of the two hands touching in the creation scene, Sistine chapel, about 500 times.

As far as concrete leaching salts (efflorescence) this is a problem solved many years ago in the industry, the salts are not a problem today. They are a sign of bad curing practises and inferior materials.