Re-purpose Collaboration

Re-purpose #2, 2011, digital c-prints, 12.4"x27"

I recently began a collaborative series of photographs with good friend Ah-ram "Tom" Park.  For the past few months I have driven by these bundles of used billboards and want to integrate them into my work somehow.  The Missouri Bank Artboards provided the perfect opportunity.....The following proposal was submitted on Friday, so now we wait...

"Caleb Taylor and Ah-ram Park have collaborated on a series of photographs titled “Re-purpose” that investigate the rejuvenation of discarded billboards.  Depicting compacted bundles of used advertisements, our photographs intervene in the recycling process and revive these discarded campaigns into new billboards. 

Our interest in capturing the physical beauty and examining the conceptual layers of these bundles has been the impetus for this collaboration.  We are intrigued with how these compressed signs become archeological time capsules that hint at marketing trends and imagery that was popular during their initial campaigns.  They relay purely abstract associations and also communicate how human processing has moved these billboards through a cycle of design, promotion, function, and reuse.  We see our involvement in this history as both an interruption and acceleration of this sequence. "

Re-purpose #7, Striations, 2011, digital c-print, 12.4"x27"

Artboards Proposal

My proposed layout for the MO Bank Artboards.  With good fortune, this idea may happen in the Crossroads.

Yesterday, I submitted a proposal to the Missouri Bank Artboards project that works with AiA of Kansas City and Charlotte Street Foundation.  I proposed a series of recent collages that respond to weathered, deteriorating billboards.  In my proposal, I created a small mock-up of my idea and think it turned out pretty well.  The collages I submitted are small (approx. 10"x14" each) and start to include layers of cut rubber, felt, and paper.  I have titled this series of work "Constructed Histories" to reference the cycle that these boards go through during their transformation.  The layering of new signs over the old became a strong thought during my cutting and pasting process.