Dean Bandes

It must have been at least 14 years ago that I used to pick up scraps of tire tread, etc., off the road while I was bicycling to work. I kept hoping to find a piece of tire with words, or better yet, a little icon showing that it was an all-weather tire, or some such, but those things are on the sidewalls. Only the treads seemed to show up by the roadside. Once in a great while I found something with letters on it, but mostly there were just interesting textures. I inked some of the old tire tread, timing belt, and rubber stair tread with black soy oil ink and printed a dozen cards before I posted the call for the swap. The colored highlights are eraser carvings done just to add some life and color to this card. The red one looks a little more like "biohazard" than I realized when I drew it.

Back to thumbnails