Old cassette tapes transform into art pieces in Meg Frank’s “Road Trip”

Summer has arrived, and I am craving a good road trip — windows down, sun shining across the horizon, and good music à la Nicole Kidman in Practical Magic. This craving is the idea behind my recent piece “Road Trip”: four cassette tapes with eight miniature oil landscape paintings depicting the journey across America from the west coast to the east. My road trips all have playlists. I am able to see the tape paintings and hear the music that kept me entertained on long journeys. You can also do it in the reverse. I find myself singing half the lyrics as I drive along the I-80. This tapes aim to create a sense of nostalgia and transportation through memory.

COVID has resulted in several cycles of canceled plans, so I’ve taken several road trips to keep my wandering brain sane. The majority of my reference photos for these paintings are photos that I took during a cross-country trip in summer 2021. I’ve started painting other out-of-date pieces of technology, like old cellphones and laptops; they feel like slightly more substantial Polaroid pictures or other tokens of memory I carry with me. The phones are fun to take with me, whether I’m using them in public places like subways or parks. Any surface can be painted with the proper preparation. This includes shells and stones, pickle jars, soda bottles, or glass soda bottles. You can make your vacation complete by finding things to paint. When you return, it’s a good way to keep the memory of those times.

I first stumbled upon the idea of painting on a cassette tape thanks to a professor’s charge to bring unusual “canvases” to class. One thing that I had to consider for my painting class was how to transport any of the paintings that I made in class back home to my place. As a youngster, I had learned to appreciate the ease of transporting art. Finding an object that came with its own case was really satisfying — even better that it’s a see-through case.

Before I painted cassette tapes I experimented with CD cases. Although I found that tapes and CD cases were more appealing than CD cases, I still love the simplicity of CD cases. It was an oil painting of a cloudy sky inside a CD case, which I titled “SoundCloud.” I wanted it to do more than just show the sky; I wanted it to be immersive. It’s hard to do that with such a small object, and I realized the way around this was to add music.

Photo by Meg Frank

Music has always been a large part of my art practice — I always have the radio on in my studio, and many of my pieces have playlists I’ve created to listen to while I work on them. Some of the tapes I’ve painted have recordings of the playlists I listened to while I worked on them, but many of them are also mass-produced tapes with music from icons like Hall & Oates, U2, James Taylor, Tina Turner, and other bands I grew up listening to in the car. I’ve been able to source a lot of the prerecorded tapes through neighbors in my local Buy Nothing group, and I’m thrilled to be able to work with recycled materials.

To paint an object like this at home, you’ll need several paint brushes (#1 round, #3 round, #5 round, #6 flat), gesso or Mod Podge, acrylic paint, some cardboard or paper plates to mix paint on, and several cups of water for rinsing. Apply several thin layers to the object using the flatbrush to primer it. It will make your paint adhere to the object better and prevent it from flaking. You can do this step anytime before you start painting. If you’re doing the craft with children, it is a good idea to priming them the night before so they don’t have to wait until the next day. To avoid warped painting, I sketch the object using a pen or pencil. I use oil paint, but I don’t recommend it for casual crafting; it’s very messy and requires the use of toxic solvents. Acrylic paint can be used more easily, is cheaper and much easier to clean up. Acrylic paint can be washed with water and soap.

While I enjoy painting on canvas, there’s something special about making art that another person can actually hold and sometimes even listen to. These tapes allow someone to hear what my brain sounds like when I look at these particular views. You can have someone else hear what my memories sound.