The Portrait Project
The Portrait Project is an ongoing social interaction (since 2005) where the “client” becomes the “artist”. Seemingly set up as a caricature busker’s stand, passersby are solicited not to have their portraits drawn, but instead to create a portrait of the artist. I purchase all the portraits for the same amount regardless of the time spent or the quality of the results, they become mine to exhibit and use –generating questions of ownership and originality, trade, compensation and fairness. Am I, as a trained artist encouraging creativity in others or merely exploiting the naive? This piece further expands and continues my search for the locus of art. Is art originated in the act of creating a situation, in the resultant work or in some other shifting loci?
