Above: rag piece (purple) and detail

This is the latest in an ongoing venture of mine in making art objects out of used studio rags. At some point, the rags that I use to wipe off my paint tools and surfaces become unable to absorb anything any more. Because of the mostly nonporous nature of dried acrylic paint, it doesn't take too long before a rag becomes unusable. I hold onto a lot of these and keep them in a storage container. It's getting so that I may need a second one or a plain box will do, too. 

Since I have a strong urge to reuse things in my art practice, I've saved a bunch of used rags over the years with designs on making them into something. I've been slowly coming around to how I could use these rags and my ideas range from making wall-based pieces out of them, as well as making them more stand-alone and  sculptural. 

In general, my approach with these pieces is to do little in image manipulation on the surfaces. Instead, I focus on the accumulation of translucent and semi-translucent layers of paint and acrylic gel mediums on the surface, allowing areas of the rag's colors to peek through where possible. By doing so, the accretion of paint and mediums allow for relatively unmediated layers or "skins" to build up. This piece has that feeling of skin with the way color forms on the folds, softening them visually, while also creating a dense, tactile shell in places.