Surface Research and Destroy

So, here I sit, $150 poorer, bereft of ten square feet of canvas, a tube of fabric glue, a tub of screen printing ink, too many tubes of paint to count, a whole role of painter's tape, one package of iron-on transfer paper, four sheets of tracing velum, a package of dried leaves, and a lot of energy. And I am finally satisfied with a piece of art that I have made for Surface Research.

I'll consider this a victory, whether anyone else does or not.

So, here are my seven individual works of art, each after the first incorporating the mutilated remains of an earlier work.

It began simply enough, as a composition in orange and blue halves on a twenty-four inch square canvas.

I sliced the canvas in half, glued the pieces back together, added them with two more twelve inch by twenty-four inch pieces of canvas, and painted those purple and yellow.

I cut each piece of canvas into a pair of squares, and arranged them in a tiling pattern.

I cut a six inch square out of the center of one square of each color, and arranged the margins in this pattern.

I screen printed stars on the squares cut from the centers of the larger squares.

I cut circles out of the remaining painted canvas, and arranged them in this pattern.

And finally, I combined the screen printed canvas squares with translucent velum and photographs to produce an art book.