Layers of Time
November 21st, 02007 by Kevin Kelly I found this on Otherthings Flickr page. It a multilayered paint chip taken from a public mural wall that was recently demolished.
This is an extreme closeup scan (2400 dpi) of a paint chip retrieved from the ruins of Belmont Art Park by Amy McKenzie earlier this year. The fragment is about 1cm thick, and appears to consist of about 150-200 layers of paint. (For a sense of scale, note the ridges of my fingerprint in the lower right.) This should give you an idea of the staggering number of pieces painted in this spot over the decades. The park used to be surrounded by one long wall covered with artwork, but that wall was illegally demolished by real estate developers earlier this year.
November 27th, 2007 at 11:34 am
This reminds me of the Original Pantry Cafe in LA that basically never closes. They have added linoleum layers over the decades that are all worn through right in front of the cash register in a similar fashion to that paint.