When you walk into the room you see the outline of a green ship on the back wall. Under it, you see a green wavy line depicting water and a scene of underwater life, complete with small and big green fish, green jellyfish, a green sea horse, a green shark and even a green deep-sea diver.
Welcome to the Tape Art Artaquarium at 5 Traverse, an art gallery off Wickenden Street, where three local tape artists - Michael Townsend, James Mercer and Jay Zehngebot - have been living for the last two weeks, drawing green masking-tape murals on the bare walls.
"We don't make products. We don't sell anything." said Townsend, who invented tape art during his first year as an undergraduate at the Rhode Island School of Design. "That's not our interest."
"If you can't show the artists' work, display the artists themselves," he added. "We're the objects in here."
The barely furnished 192-square-foot space has a futon for the artists to sleep on and a table with a 30-inch computer monitor and other equipment. A large glass window overlooks the street, allowing passersby to see what is going on inside. The floor of the room is covered with grayish-white rocks, adding to the "aquarium effect."
A live Webcam, recording the artists' movements and broadcasting them on the gallery's Web site, sits on an empty Gatorade bottle next to the computer.
Townsend says purpose of the Webcam is to have "no privacy - (to be) as transparent as possible."
But he adds that the aquarium effect is more obvious during the day.
"At night, it just seems like a box of rocks," he says.
The right wall of the room slides to reveal a 162-square-foot garage space, which also has tape art on the walls. A tiny bathroom is sandwiched between the two rooms.
"My whole gallery is designed to provide something for Rhode Island-vicinity artists," said Jesse Smith, owner of 5 Traverse, who has hired the artists to live in his gallery for a month, from Jan. 14 through Feb. 15.
Smith said he supports artists like Townsend, Mercer and Zehngebot, who choose to be artists "in the truest way possible, throwing to the wind the idea of a stable economic life."
In today's market-driven world, Smith said, it is "depressing" to see consumerism and salesmanship determining the success of artists.
"As a gallery owner and artist, I was struggling with the commodification of creativity," he said, adding that he wanted to put up a show that challenged the notion of an "object-driven gallery" that displays the works of "marketable artists."
Smith said the show has been well-received by the public. The artists welcome those who walk in and talk to them about tape art, answering their questions and showing them pictures and videos of their past work done in various parts of the country, Smith said.
Smith said "the energy behind tape art" is responsible for the show's success. "All I'm offering is white walls," he added.
Smith said he heard about Townsend on the news last year for building a hideaway at the Providence Place Mall with seven other local artists. They lived in it off-and-on for four years before Townsend was caught by mall security, charged with misdemeanor trespassing and put on six-month probation, The Herald reported Oct. 16.
Townsend, who told The Herald that the mall project was "cut (off) at the beginning of its prime," said living at 5 Traverse Gallery is a "decent enough transition" as the artists are now "occupying yet another space."
The artists have been successful in attracting the public's attention to their "artaquarium."
"We were wondering what the tape art was," said Joseph Kaplan, a RISD freshman, who saw the artists through the window and came inside.
"I like that (the tape art on the walls) keeps changing. That's cool," said Gianna Pergamo, another RISD freshman who was pulled in by curiosity.
Apart from emphasizing the idea of "public art," Townsend said the artists are working on accomplishing two other goals during their stay at the gallery. One of their goals is teaching - the gallery is open to anyone who would like to learn to draw with tape. In the past two weeks, teachers have brought in students who have learned to make murals on the walls, Townsend said.
"The 10-year-olds did that," he says, pointing to the back wall with drawings depicting marine life.
The second project is to create graphics for the music video of a song called "Rash of Robberies" by the band State Radio.
Sam White, a visual artist and director of the music video, said he was "intrigued" by the artists' past work and wanted to incorporate tape art into the video using an animation technique called stop-motion. The technique involves setting up an object, taking a picture of it, moving it slightly, taking another picture and then putting all the pictures together.
The artists' task is to draw a tape art mural, film it for a few seconds, take it down, draw the same mural again with minor changes and film it again. Repeating this process and then compressing the clips together produces the effect of movement. A day of work only produces ten or 15 seconds of video, Townsend said.
The process of animation using stop-motion is "pretty labor-intensive," White said, adding that the video will be complete in April.
The well-lit gallery with its white walls has given the artists the ideal location to work on the video, as well as to teach the art of making "ephemeral messes" or tape art to the public, Townsend said.
He and the artists are enjoying their time at the gallery, "being available for kids and waving at neighbors."
It's a "funny extension of the philosophy of public art," Townsend said.
