raven

(32"×32") The raven is for a book that's coming out next year called The ARK Project.

Minga in-progress

Minga deserves her own portrait in tape. 

seed

(24"×13") This one's been sitting around my apartment collecting dust, like real flowers in my apartment do, so I finally took some shots of it. Don't know where I got this piece of wood but it seemed like a good canvas for tape.

Update on Friday, March 13, 2009 at 05:38PM by Chris Hosmer

I just sold this piece. I *think* this is the first tape drawing sale!

Hashidate Maru

(12'×9') This is the largest tape mural I've done and it's on the wall at 55 Norfolk. After WWII my Grandfather spent two years on a whaling ship in the Antarctic called the Hashidate Maru. He used to tell me stories about how smart the whales were, how they were so strong they'd burn out the engines of the boats by pulling them for miles. I think this piece is my imagining of that struggle but from the whale's perspective. It feels both violent and serene to me.

Ben

Kenbo

John

Packy

(23"x31") Black and yellow masking tape and paper tape on corrugated cardboard of the average variety. This one is much smaller than the ones on the wall and feels more like how I actually draw. This is one of many tape portraits I am doing to be installed at 55 Norfolk Gallery in Cambridge, MA.

A heart a part

Installed at 55 Norfolk Gallery, Cambridge, MA

(4.5'X5') Overheard in Amsterdam: In-progress composition of a sketch I drew after overhearing a couple arguing about their past love lives. She said, "You know I know", and he said, "I know you know". There was such a symmetry to the moment and it struck me that a heart shape can be as divergent a form as it is a unifying one. It's better if the couple is looking at you, like they know about you too.

I'm also experimenting with a projector for the first time. Not for tracing - the drawings of the faces (and all the tape drawings to date) are painstakingly done freehand - but because I wanted to try drawing a pattern using a grid that I project over the whole thing at the end. That's what the pink tape is for.

Africa 2

(8'x7') It turns out that digitizing 35 hours of video takes 35 hours. So while I load tapes and capture video, one hour at a time, I started drawing out the second Africa piece. This time it's of a group of boys that we encountered on the road to Kigali. They were playing soccer with a ball made of plastic bags that were compressed and tied together. I like this one the best so far because I was pretty sloppy with it. It was a whirlwind just like the trip.