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Q & A
essentially be wasted. It would essentially be an environmental disaster to take all of the energy and resources and waste it.
When I went into the film, I expected to see a bunch of college-age students goofing off and getting away with something super-cool. But when I saw it I realized the film has deeper messages. What was the message or feeling you wanted people to take away from the film? TOWNSEND: It’ s not my film; I’ m just on the other end of the camera being interviewed. That said, what I have come to peace with about this being a product out in the world is that it does a great job extending our art-education mission. You have this movie that presents to the viewer an incredibly wide range of art ideas and any viewer, wherever they are in their art journey or their art thinking, can look at the movie and recognize that it’ s art. My favorite part is all those voices at the end talking about the art and putting it out in front of the audience. I think that’ s really important for viewers because it helps them feel confidence about art and art thinking. SMITH: The film also introduces Tape Art to millions of people. We’ ve been doing Tape Art for a long time and people still have never heard of it. That’ s because we’ re a small crew. It’ s not just that we want to get out there ourselves, it’ s more the idea that we want to introduce people to this medium as a medium, specifically for social artwork. To see other people doing Tape Art is everything. We cannot do as much Tape Art as we believe would be good for the world, so inspiring others to do it is the goal. Knowing that other people are getting out there and doing it now was one of the main reasons to do the movie. We wanted to share that art form with the world.
What projects are you excited about right now? SMITH: At the end of the school year, we do a lot of teaching K – 12 and into college. Today we’ re headed off to work with 130 college students up in Worcester. We just got done with a big mural project at Brown. We’ ve been doing some mural projects at Holy Cross. We’ ve got a small mural project in Boston coming up.
It’ s just a lot of community work. April is the perfect time of year to capture people before everyone wants to go to the beach. TOWNSEND: We’ re working at Butler and their facilities for the next monthand-a-half.
What do you do when you go to these schools and locations? SMITH: We give them demos and then on their own walls they’ re creating imagery with our assistance, mostly just technical assistance. It’ s also nice because we get to see tape used in a multitude of ways. We have a very specific style we keep to when we’ re doing our own work, for practical and aesthetic reasons. But when you work with a group of 100 people, there are so many different choices that are being made that are inspiring. We get to see new uses for a medium we really love. It’ s always delightful to see people invent the medium for themselves because they’ re not weighed down by 1,000 years of painting examples that make them feel like they don’ t know how to paint. No one knows what Tape Art should look like, so they’ re always reinventing it for us in front of us. TOWNSEND: They’ re just drawing all day with tape. Depending on the volume of students, we can take over entire schools.
What do you think of the Providence arts scene? TOWNSEND: People look at the movie and are upset they missed that period of time in the late’ 90s and early 2000s where there were these large collective live workspaces that were basically creative chaos. I’ m fascinated that there are so many of these more tightly grouped organized art spaces. It feels like there are even more venues and offerings for people to make art now than there were in the’ 90s. The doors are a little bit more open to a wider range of people. In our own neighborhood, there’ s the [ Lefty Loosey ] Bike Collective and the Steel Yard and the LitArts people and that’ s all in one neighborhood. Those are spaces anyone can visit. They’ re all one step away from being nonprofits if they aren’ t already. SMITH: I consider us a pretty artsy city. A lot of the art has become institutionalized in a good way. There are nonprofits out there, there’ s Steel Yard and AS220 and they’ re providing art to the city, which is
50 RHODE ISLAND MONTHLY I JULY 2026