By Alejandra Ramos

It begins with a canvas covered from end to end, a single color.

Perhaps orange? Perhaps blue.

(Echoes of a long-ago lesson about restoration: the solid and color-blocked works are more difficult to restore. The simplicity puts the emphasis on the brushstrokes and texture, the errors more noticeable, the damage, the aging, the chips, the fades.)

The canvas is of an average size, slightly larger than a large book, something that can be carried.

(That is the main rule of this.)

We’re calling it reckless and it is a co-creation with accident.

For a week or two (perhaps more), we carry the canvas around—to work, to class, to dinner, to the theater, to the gym, in the car—cabs, on the subway of course, into the grocery cart, shove it in a tote sometimes along with pens, lunch, a water bottle damp with condensation.

The point is to not be precious, but to carry it around like an extension of the body, valuable irreplaceable yet ignored until it is gone or ceases to work.

(The parts we need and want and love the most yet treat the least.)

Each morning, in the natural light of day, we survey the transformation.

The changes.

The hits of the days.

Take notes.

Take photos.

Resist the urge to edit.

In the end the piece will exist as a record of the damage

Perhaps not damage.

Perhaps only a record.