Take a Rubbing, Leave a Mark is a hand-drawn facsimile of a gallery floor made through a series of rubbings and the unintended trace left behind.

A rubbing pulls into it the shape of floor, the pits and cracks and holes, along with human debris, the hair, dust and skin. A little gross and dirty, but there’s a kind of poignancy in these rubbings as a collection of fragments of existence from this lived-in space.

A reciprocity is established in the taking and leaving. I took something of the gallery in the facsimile of the floor, stealing some of the things that belong to that space; the dust and the skin and the shape of the floor. But I also left something behind in the form of temporary marks, made by the pencil skidding over the edges of the page. These were eventually scuffed away.

Shown At:
This ongoing project has had iterations at RM (where the original was made) and Blue Oyster Project Space, where both a new facsimile was made and the RM facsimile was exhibited.