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Imagine using a set of stamps and an ink pad to create your own self-portrait, one that shows the world how you see yourself. That is what artist Bryce McCloud, who owns the design studio Isle of Printing, has asked of more than a thousand Nashvillians for a project he calls Our Town.
Part public art project, part social experiment, Our Town started as an inkling of an idea when McCloud was teaching classes at Room In the Inn, a homeless shelter where he was the 2012 artist-in-residence through the Thomas P. Seigenthaler Fund.
'I was struggling to think of something that could be meaningful and came up with this idea that we could do self-portraits. When you ask someone to draw him- or herself, it's really a telling thing because you start to learn things about them that maybe [aren't] readily apparent,” he says. 'One week I brought in stamp pads and had everyone use their fingerprints to make their self-portrait, and immediately something clicked.”
Though McCloud is known mainly for his commercial workhe's the mastermind behind the wall of cans that frame the bowling lanes at Pinewood Social as well as the creator of the stunning 'cloud wall” at Barista Parlor Golden Soundhis public art projects bring to the forefront a deeper mission, one that almost feels like it's the product of a city visionary. McCloud comes from a fine art backgroundspecifically, the art of letterpress. Inspired by his uncle Roger Frith, who was once a historian with the Tennessee State Museum and focused on Nashville's printing history, McCloud got into letterpress early in his career. His Isle of Printing studio sits in an area he helped dub Pie Towna pie-shaped sliver of land bordered by Lafayette Avenue, 8th Avenue, and the interstatethat's also home to Room In the Inn as well as the Nashville Rescue Mission.
'This area is where many of Nashville's homeless people come to for services. They are, and have been, my neighbors,” says McCloud. 'I wanted to use art as a way to give parity to themto give them a way to speak on an equal platform. So every week I told the classes that if they took the time to take it seriously that I would find some way to make this part of a larger conversation with the city.”
Soon, an idea formed to carry out the project on a larger scale, and a connection with the Metro Arts Commission gave McCloud the resources to do just that. From a corner on Broadway to the Conexión Américas community center, McCloud and his team have spent the last three years visiting dozens of locations around the city with a mobile bike cart, which carries all of the tools necessary for people to create their own self-portraits. In exchange, he's made block prints of many of the portraits; 125 of them will eventually live in the archives at the Nashville Public Library.
This fall, McCloud reaches phase two of Our Town, which he calls 'Together Heroic.” More of a public performance, the events introduce massive, two-foot-tall stamps made from wooden boxes, which participants have to team up to maneuver; each stamp requires at least two people, usually three, to be lifted and lowered, meaning one person acts as the 'eye,” one works as the 'hand,” and a third might work as the 'mind.”
'It's somewhat ridiculous, but it's supposed to be,” McCloud says with a smile. 'Public art is always a little bit high art and a little bit of a sideshow. I want people to come in wherever they're comfortablefor some, it needs to be a spectacle and for others, maybe this is what it will take to get them to laugh a little bit.”
Join the Our Town: Together Heroic project at the Nashville Public Library on October 16 and 17.