Surface No.1: 578 Objects 1995/2000

This one got started while I was living in San Francisco. I was running my frame shop on Sutter St. and saving all the mat blades I had used for customer work. Once I had accrued enough, I threw them in a bleach solution and let them rust. Then I air-dried them on the window sill for a few days, coated them with urethane and laid them out on my canvas with felt risers for a dimensional, drop-shadow effect. As you can see, I used nothing to measure or regulate the position of the blades and so they go quite skew in the middle, an accident I always loved. Any pigment on the canvas (over gatorboard)is gesso and I left the edges raw for a long while but then when I got to St. Louis I splashed beeswax on them. Refinished and repaired the outer frame as well. Also made a good effort of cleaning and resurfacing the blades (the thing was five years old by then) but mostly succeeded in cutting up my fingers pretty good, so I refinished the blades in my own blood. The piece finally, after showing in San Francisco, Los Angeles and St. Louis, sold to real estate developer Robert Wood and hangs in his offices to this day.

Film 2003/2012

All Summer Long 2003

I found the negatives for these in the parking lot of the Shop 'n' Save on Kingshiway and Chippewa in St. Louis. They were right there on the asphault, all crunched up 'n' shit. Naturally, I took them home and scanned them. Then I put the images to work in a series of five pieces called All Summer Long, juxtaposed to a lot of Beach Boys lyrics, which showed at Mad Art in my Endless Summer show.

Serendipitous Abstract Compositions Generator

Check these out.









































































Alright, what's happening here is last week or two weeks ago I downloaded a movie and it turned out the file was corrupt in a bunch of spots and essentially unwatchable. I was just about to throw it out but that I noticed that the garbled portions were actually sort of interesting. I froze the frame and discovered the first of thousands and thousands of cool, little, abstract compositions in the De Stijl or neoplasticist style that this fascinating interference was generating... an honest-to-Christ, real, live instance of unadulterated serendipity.

Now, so we're clear, I've not cropped these nor goofed with them in Photoshop, save that I turned them all on their sides. I think they work better in the vertical orientation.