I’ve been interested in the tar marks the city crews make on the cracks in asphalt roadbeds when they repair them, there’s a nice script-like gesture to the best of them. I’ve done some recording of the shapes and lines using multiple digital photos to create hi-res montages of shapes I’ve found in parking lots and city streets. While I was in Austin I did some waaaaay low-budget photo montaging with a digital camera that could only record 15 seconds of video, pointing it down from my driver’s-side window as I went down the road. I then stitched the video frames together to make a “manuscript” of the scribblings. Here’s an example of such:

All this was fine, and I had some of the more photographic montages in a show, but about a week ago I had an interesting idea: why take it a little further than just recording these, and actually create a collaborative art piece out of these marks? Thus, my roadbed palimpsests, a collaboration between myself and the Cambridge Public Works Department:

Ultramarine 01 • acrylic and tar on asphalt • 2011

Phthalocyanine Blue 01 • acrylic and tar on asphalt • 2011

Permanent Light Green 01 • acrylic and tar on asphalt • 2011

Permanent Light Green 02 • acrylic and tar on asphalt • 2011

These pieces can be seen on Russell, Milton and Chester Streets in Cambridge, MA, just off of Massachusetts Avenue.