Prompt 6: There's nothing to see, so you look

Charline von Heyl, "Wall at WAM" mural, Worcester Art Museum, 2011

The Worcester Art Museum in Worcester, Massachusetts has a commissioning mural program. They invite artists to create a mural for their 67 x 17 foot wall in one of the primary entry spaces. It's a rotating commission program (the work does not stay permanently installed) and most artists who are invited to participate create an image that is digitally printed and hung much like billboard signs around the city.

When Charline von Heyl was invited in 2011, she thought - I'm a painter and I've been invited to paint a mural - so I'm going to paint it. And she did:

The drawing she made as a sketch for the mural came from a series of drawings she worked on while living in Marfa, Texas. In a talk at WAM on her process, she described spending long hours sitting in the prairie in Texas where there really is "nothing to look at" -- just grasses and large, empty sky. And so, when there is "nothing to see, you LOOK -- you really look at something." In shifting her focus to the minuscule nothing that was around her, she noticed "critters"- Texas bugs and crawly things, and began to draw them in all their awkward spindly legs and motion:

Charline von Heyl, Sketch for Wall at WAM (detail), 2010, ink and wax-crayon on paper, 19 x 48 inches. Courtesy of the artist and Friedrich Petzel Gallery

For Prompt 6, respond to von Heyl's phrase, "There's nothing to see, so you look." Shift your vision, use the environment around you (inside or outside) and respond either visually, or with words, or of course, with both...