Pizza Box Top Delivery Project, 2015

The Nothing That Is – a drawing show in five parts, Contemporary Art Museum, Raleigh, NC

“The Nothing That Is – a drawing show in five parts" was an exhibition curated by Jason Polan and Bill Thelen at the Contemporary Art Museum of Raleigh, NC.

I was invited to contribute Chapter 5, Open Source. This component to the exhibition explored collaborative art strategies that engage the public and social sphere.

For this exhibition, I wanted to explore the distribution of art beyond the context of the museum. To do this, I worked with a local pizza parlor to develop a parasitic relationship between the delivery of pizzas and the distribution of art. 5 friends and I painted the tops of nearly 100 cardboard pizza boxes using only white and black acrylic paint. The series of square paintings became a single temporary installation at the museum. Shortly after being on view, the painted pizza boxes returned to the pizza parlor. We then invited the public to order a pizza from the parlor for delivery. They would subsequently receive an artwork from the exhibition and a large pizza.

The box tops were painted in collaboration with Derek Toomes, Christopher Thomas, Barbara Campbell Thomas, Tristin Miller, and Bill Thelen.