'THIS MIGHT NOT WORK'

Over the past ten months, I’ve been developing a special collection of images that pay tribute to Hip-Hop artists.  While I had previously been using watercolor to render these depictions, I was drawn to the textured and toned surface of every-day, corrugated cardboard. The light brown surface allowed me to have a middle ground and value that afforded me an opportunity to work with white charcoal.  Instead of just drawing shadows and edges with the graphite, I was now able to generate a glow or lit surface with the lightest touches of the white media.

The affordability and accessibility of the cardboard, as well as the texture that emerges in the drawings, has me looking forward to other experiments that I can attempt.  In the future I hope to use text, collage, color, and perhaps tear and pull back the top surface of the board. There are many possibilities for this series, and I’m far from done.

Exciting connections have been established with the subjects of a few of these drawings, as I continue to seek out opportunities for meetings and collaborations -always with an eye on the musical artist ‘finishing’ the piece with a signature and lyrics.   – AJK