three large prints titled MASS made from folded shirts by artist Nick Cave on wall seen from an extreme angle

Folded shirts made into collagraph print. this image is the plate from which the prints were made.

This is a print from the front of the plate made of folded shirts, printed in dark brownish black.

This is a print from the back of the plate made of folded shirts, printed in dark brownish black.

MASS, 2000

About the artist

Multimedia, performance, and installation artist Nick Cave earned his BFA in fiber from the Kansas City Art Institute in 1982. From 1985-86, he studied at North Texas State University, and earned an MFA in Fine Arts and Fiber at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan in 1989. He served as an instructor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago from 1989-1993.

Cave’s work is included in the American Craft Museum in New York, as well as in numerous private collections. He has also received several awards, including a Ford Foundation Scholarship and grants from the Illinois Art Council and Arts Midwest.

Best known for performance pieces that incorporate highly textural costumes and dance, Cave also incorporates fiber, clothing, and ritual into his sculptural work. At Island Press he transformed real shirts into a collagraph plate, thus creating a work of art out of the printing vehicle itself.

This piece is a triptych of two intaglio prints plus the actual 2-sided plate of folded shirts that they were printed from.

Related project

Other works by Nick Cave

Three photolithograph and collagraph panels of black and white shapes with red shapes in the center panel