Seven Year Art Project

click to enlarge

I have finished around 150 of these canvases over the last seven years. I started buying these 24" x 24" muslin cloths by the dozens from Archie Mcphee's years ago. Manufactured by various institutions for the blind--Maryland Workshop for the Blind and Mississippi Industries, they were intended to be instrument tray covers or something like that. I use them for paintings, mixed media assemblages, gift wrapping, but mainly for portraits. The cloths have been folded in a warehouse for decades, and the folds are pretty permanent. You can iron them out eventually. You can wash them, but then they lose all that sizing that keeps them stiff enough to draw on with pen and ink or Sharpies [tm]. So, the folds have become a part of, and defined this series of drawings.

The cloth is divided into 16 six inch squares. Each square contains one portrait, although I have six canvases that have six portraits in each square (or, 96 per canvas). I have done a few double ones, with two drawings in each square, and I have done a few abstract ones, still using the built in squares.

Hanging on the wall, in my office at work, are 123 of these canvases (I have 20 or so more folded up in a stack), and I have probably given away 20 or so over the years...
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