“My Boo” is the first piece I completed in which words formed a shape or symbol. The idea popped into my head as I was dancing around to Ghost Town DJ’s 1996 single “My Boo”, back in our apartment in Seattle. All of a sudden, I realized that I needed to compile the song’s lyrics in the shape of a ghost.

To complete this piece, I grabbed an 11 x 14 inch sheet of vellum paper, then measured out a rectangle in the center of the page. The rectangle was then shaped into a ghost through a combination of freehand drawing and careful measuring with a ruler.

Once the shape was in place, I rotated the paper and filled in the outline with a black Sakura Pigma Micron 005 pen. As soon as I filled the space, I carefully erased the pencil lines. To my horror, I discovered that I mixed up one of the words in the chorus, and I’d have to do the piece all over again.

This might sound like an overreaction, but it changes the entire meaning of the song! Version one (right) includes the wrong lyric: “I want to be your lady, baby”. Version two (left) includes the correct lyric: “I want to be your lady, maybe.”

To correct this mistake, I grabbed a piece of wax paper and traced the ghost on the original piece. I cut out the shape with an X-Acto knife, then used it as a stencil to retrace the shape onto a new sheet of paper. Then, I repeated the process all over again until the new piece was completed.

At one point, I wrote “baby” again by mistake, but I crossed it out and embraced the error. It was like a little Easter egg, a reference to the piece’s unique history.

“My Boo” appeared at Salon Bar-Kon as part of the Capitol Hill Art Walk. it was one of the first pieces to sell in that show, and in a pleasant surprise, the original version with the wrong lyrics wound up selling, too. I’ve affectionately named that version “My Bad Boo”.

Is this piece available?

This piece is no longer available.