Traces

Permission to Participate

A Trace with Jeremy Shantz

Working with Jeremy Shantz was like having a million good ideas every day.

We could imagine making most of them. Given the resources, an invitation, or simply enough room to get on with it, any one of those conversations could become something.

Many did.

Covered in tattoos — arms, hands, neck, face. Broad shoulders, a narrow waist, one big hoop in his ear.

He has the presentation of a walking middle finger.

Spend a little time with him and you meet an extremely gentle, caring, inquisitive man. Brilliant, and abundantly creative, he takes people off guard, to say the least.

And the good ideas keep coming.

Spend a little time with him and you meet an extremely gentle, caring, inquisitive man.

Brilliant, and abundantly creative — the ideas keep coming.

We travelled internationally, painted murals, hosted events and other artists. We went through the fires together. Some of these collaborations grew through the International Public Art Festival, which brought us into communities and public spaces across the Yucatán Peninsula.

Jeremy is a magical creature.

This was one of our journies.

Jeremy Shantz and Jason Botkin with two finished interactive portrait panels in a public square in Cancún

We often worked
with masks.

Put one on and your posture changes. You might become louder, sillier, or willing to approach someone you wouldn’t have spoken to a moment before.

We liked watching people discover what they could get away with.

The masks gave them
a little room to try.

A woman holding a painted tooth-shaped mask piece up to her face in front of the mural

In a public square in Cancún, we built large interactive portraits with interchangeable facial features.

Super-sized Mr. Potato Head mobile interactive murals at a scale people could gather around. Visitors moved the parts, swapped features, and changed moods, one strange face after another.

Children understood immediately.

Adults took a little longer.

Before long, both did the same thing.

Someone would leave a face for the next person to change.

The composition passes from hand to hand.