Words on the Street - Blue

Out on one of my morning photo walks, a series black and white tiles caught my attention. It was a section of a shop's facade. Four-inch square tiles with apparently random designs and placement, as if a previous shop owner found a box of remnant tiles at a Re-store, or in a dumpster; as if the shop's staff had been tasked to decorate blank tiles with black sharpie markers. It had no relation to the style or theme of the shoo,

Or... is it not random? Could it all mean something? The tile shapes, placement, occasional repetition, remind me of ancient written languages, hieroglyphics, cuneiform, runes. Alien code from a B sci-fi movie, a message from outer space. The real date of the end of time. Thus this work's title, which is also a play on the slang expression, as in "word on the street is that MCO Fine Art is the real deal."

The original section of tiles is black and white. To convert to color, I started working with this in a mode called "Duotone" in Photoshop. Duotone mode actually starts with a grayscale image for luminosity, and the artist can then choose ink colors, from a Pantone pallet, for example. I was aiming for a wood-cut ink print look with "Words on the Street," and I love the results!

Details

• Paper Size: 17 x 25 inches
• Image Size: 12.6 x 22 inches
• Margins: about 1.5 inches
• Paper: 100% cotton rag paper. Archival grade. Matte.
• Available in different colors. Edition of 5 prints each color.
• Camera: Fujifilm X-E3
• Date: 2020