You're Hired: Tape Art Returns to Brattleboro with Immersive Arts Experience

This month, Brattleboro Museum & Art Center will welcome a couple of familiar faces back to Vermont when it hosts TAPE ART MEGA CORP from March 21 to 29. Always innovating and ever evolving, this new project of the Tape Art organization will transform an office at 28 Vernon St. in downtown Brattleboro (the former Marlboro Graduate School building) into a playful and hands-on art environment where visitors can participate fully in the creative experience by grabbing a roll of tape and getting to work. Tape Art is the creative duo of artists Michael Townsend and Leah Smith, as well as a revolving number of additional artists, who are well known nationwide for transforming everyday walls into large-scale, temporary murals using rolls of low-adhesive tape. Tape Art is based in Providence, R.I., and has installed hundreds of murals and thousands of smaller works in communities across the country and beyond to countries like Hong Kong, Japan, Greece and Germany. The touring artists have brought their distinctive and removable medium to classrooms, hospitals, corporate boardrooms and cultural spaces through murals and workshops, as well as healing and activism efforts, that blend street art, performance and play for all involved. The quickly disappearing murals exist purely to inspire the imagination, promote conversation and create community connection. Townsend founded Tape Art in 1989 and has become known for his inventive approach and endless curiosity about art's place in the world. Many will recognize him from the recent Netflix documentary "Secret Mall Apartment" that chronicles his outrageously surprising endeavor to build a hidden apartment inside the Providence Place Mall where he was able to live undetected with fellow artists for a mind-blowing four years. Smith is a multidisciplinary artist and longtime collaborator who also creates videos, installations and sculpture projects. She is an advocate for the preservation of artistic presence within urban development. Many Brattleboro residents will remember Tape Art from their last visit in August 2023 when they covered the exterior stones of the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center with hundreds of miniature murals to represent gravesites with rolling landscapes above and burial plots beneath each headstone. Before that, in 2022, Smith and Townsend collaborated with the ArtLords, an acclaimed Afghan artist collective, to create the "Honoring Honar" public art installation around Brattleboro. The temporary mural project aimed to recognize and honor the artwork that had been destroyed by the Taliban in Afghanistan. This newest project, TAPE ART MEGA CORP, is a hands-on, immersive art experience that mimics a tongue-in-cheek corporate world where visitors can "clock in" for a shift to create their own tape necktie and help decorate the company's new Brattleboro headquarters using imagination and rolls of colorful tape. They may opt to build cubicles, design tape trophies or assist with critical "work orders" in the shape of animals. The option to simply observe from a workstation is also available, as there are "employment" positions for all comfort levels. Visitors can drop in throughout the run of the project, which begins from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday, March 21, and then is open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily from Sunday, March 22, through Saturday, March 28. On Sunday, March 29, it will be open for the final day of the project from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., after which there will be a festive "office" party from 4 to 6 p.m., where participants can celebrate with pizza while helping to tear down the tape. Admission is free, and all are welcome. In addition, groups of any size and type can also schedule customized hands-on visits with the Tape Art team. "TAPE ART MEGA CORP embodies what we love about public art," said Danny Lichtenfeld, director of the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center. "It's free, it's welcoming and it invites people of all ages to create together. "It's a great example of how art can inspire curiosity, spark laughter and connect people through shared experience." Find a promotional video for TAPE ART MEGA CORP on the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center's YouTube channel at youtube.com/@brattmuseum/videos and learn more about Tape Art at tapeart.com. The Brattleboro Museum & Art Center, located at 10 Vernon St., presents rotating exhibits of contemporary art, complemented by lectures, artist talks, film screenings and other public programs. For more information, visit brattleboromuseum.org.