For Blake Rayne, the act of painting includes folding, sewing, cutting, and draping his materials—and he considers the final work secondary to the process of making it. An overarching theme in Rayne’s projects is an emphasis on the labor that creativity entails. For this reason, his paintings are often displayed alongside their packing crates, which serve as reminders of the physical action required to deliver a finished work to an audience. Rayne, who insists that his pieces require “no fancy footwork,” has a wry sense of humor. Puns abound in his paintings: in his “Cover Letter” series (2010), a piece of felt in the shape of a lowercase “a” hangs over a stretched canvas. A 2011 show titled “Folder & Application” contained works with visible folds and self-fashioned tools for applying pigment.