Ancient history? October of last year maybe ancient history to some, but for me it's still relevant. I shared this artwork on my blog back then, but I am still working in a similar theme and with the same materials. So I thought I would share a bit more about it here.

Washington Av was a departure for me in size, I have never worked on anything quite this large before. At nearly six feet wide and with a heavy duty plastic drop cloth as it's base, it was quite unwieldy to work with at times. Especially during the summer heat! But I persevered.

I was intrigued by figuring out how to create texture with the recycled plastic shopping bags. I didn't want to melt them and expose my family to chemicals I might unknowingly be releasing. I didn't want to use a glue for adhering the plastics together either, because I wanted to have some volume with my texture. Flat and smooth works well at times, but this time I wanted pebbly scrunchy texture that would remind one of crumbling plaster perhaps. I achieved this texture by scrunching the plastic with my fingers and stitching it down with small basting stitches. It was rather time consuming, but worth it.

I enjoyed doing a bit of reverse applique with my plastics. For the windows, I layered plastic from the back and cut away some of the drop cloth from the front to suggest open windows. I also used a portion of a well used drop cloth left from my college days to represent a graffiti covered plywood wall in my composition.

Hope you enjoyed this inside look on creating of Washington Av! If you're ever in my neck of the woods and would like to see it in person, just shoot me an email.