The ones that aren’t used in the first go-round often simmer in the background, then bubble up sparkling on a brand-new tip. Once upon a time, yet still within this century, I created a mural design for a big-box retailer’s two street-facing walls, planning to enter their contest. My art in this case was all about Brooklyn: love and pride, day and night, scaled to be huge, listing the name of every single neighborhood. Excellent project.

But my hardware and programs of twelve years ago didn’t have enough capacity to save really large files. They crashed all the time. I missed the deadline. Kept the images, however, and have often used the backgrounds since then. I like them, they’re simple and clean and lend themselves to variations. Here’s nine transformations circa February 2016, plus the tone-poem hoods in all their glory.

Images and text by Catherine Rutgers © 2016