"Iron Street Memories" 23" x 27" mixed media. Completed on October 14th, 2010. This piece is made out of reclaimed materials and objects. For example the background material and white embroidered shapes came from taking apart a box spring mattress. It also has remnants of a previous oil painting on canvas that I cut up. I found several used ball caps in a free clothing box on the end of my street. I used the bills of the hats to add some 3 dimensionality to the piece. I cut plastic garbage bags into strips and braid them together to outline all the different shapes of the work. And then I sewed everything together with dental floss.
This piece is a visual expression of the small subculture I experienced in a specific place and time, when I was around 14, living on the streets in Bellingham, WA. A bunch of us kids stayed in an abandoned house on Iron Street. Rumor had it that the house had spent seven or so years with a continuous and revolving occupancy of transients, punk rockers and whoever happened to be passing through town. We called it the Iron Street Squat. A lot of us kids would pass the time drinking 40's of Old E, sewing patches onto our clothes with dental floss and practicing graffiti in sketch books and on the walls of the building.
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