I like materials that come from the real world and arrive with their own baggage, preferably with associations that seem contradictory, paradoxical. Tar has found many practical uses through the ages, in shipbuilding for sealing the hulls of wooden vessels and preserving rigging, for waterproofing roofs and foundations, for treating various skin conditions but also, inescapably, evoking the unspeakable suffering from tar and feathering, usually ending in death, a practice that dates back to the middle ages.