Every year I do my best to make as much art as I can to give away as gifts. As in years past we're doing hundreds and hundreds of pieces for the One Thousand Thousand project that feature Burning Man related imagery but this year I'm taking it a bit further and doing some larger screen printed posters.

The posters are about 13" by 21" and are collage-style screen prints that incorporate a hodge-podge of Burning Man related imagery. They are hand-pulled and no two are alike. Some have as little as two or three separate images while the more complex ones incorporate close to 10 or so images using as many colors. Others are monotone while some are glow in the dark.

In a perfect world I'd have more of these to pass out and as it stands I've just got 110 of them. The people that end up with these end up with one for a reason. They’ve done something or said something or made something or have been something out in the desert that was meaningful to me in a big way and this is just my way to say thanks. That's not to say that if you don't get one that these things don't apply to you. Obviously. 

Anyway, some are better than others but over all I really do like the way they turned out and I wanted to show the progress of these things as they were being made and I hope to see you out on the playa and give you one of them. The image gallery is just below the Read More break and the full album with new images being added constantly is here: ​https://goo.gl/photos/1Up2nw1yVvSsECJv6

​Last year I just packed up my car and drove around the country for no real reason at all. In hindsight I think I was having something like a mid-life crisis but without the crisis part. Mainly I just wanted to see as much art and loveliness as I could. I drove from Silicon Valley through LA and Tucson and Texas and New Orleans. Eventually I made it up to see my family in Missouri before beginning the trip back home.

I discovered Lego Darth Vader in my backpack somewhere as I was leaving Missouri and I took a photo of him and sent it to Gavin.

I did that again at another scenic overlook and then it just took on a life of its own.  I couldn't stop taking photos of Lego Darth Vader just everywhere. I took him through Colorado and Utah and Nevada and Arizona. He's been to a ton of places and I am probably locked into doing this for a long, long time.

It's hard to help and I am just weirdly obsessive like that.

These are just some of them from the trip.

So salon style it had to be lest there be hundreds of horizontally centered, framed pieces made instantly obsolete. And, besides, I knew how rad salon style was gonna look. [You saw how great it looked, yeah?]

So many people gave so many pieces a new home that after the first few days I had to get more work into frames and hung to keep up. That's a remarkably humbling and cool thing to be sure. By the last week of the show there were about 120 more pieces added to the overall show. [I think the number of framed works that were on display maxed out at well over  520 or so? We're getting that stuff worked out now but it's all just a whole lot.]

So, anyway, yeah, since the regular display at Kaleid Gallery is hung grid style using only the vertical pieces I'm wondering what to do with all the horizontal pieces there are left over? I'd say I've got about 75 or so and a chunk of them came from contributions from Kim Keek Richardson, Isadora Cryer, Angelica Paez and KatherineOgg. [Who all seem to have not firm preference for which way they orient the blank boards. There's enough, I'd say, for even a South First Fridays Double Header so if you have any ideas you should text/call 520-955-9025.  

I've been working on the One Thousand Thousand project for a long, long time. In years past a big part of the process involved working with other artists to sort of push one another to do things they'd not normally/immediately consider and having other styles and techniques kind of imposed on you definitely facilitates growth. So it's been a collaborative effort for sure. I've roped a lot of people in to participate in the project and if you know me then chances are I've stuck a paintbrush in your hands and said to have a go at it.

There have been plenty of instances where other artists took to the project and produced a series of pieces on their own and the cool part of it is to see how it takes on a life of its own with them. One recent example is when I last visited my Very Good Friend Kim in St. Louis. I'd been hounding her for years to consider doing some work for the project. She was gracious enough years ago to have worked on a piece I did for my 52 Weeks project [She did Week 36. ] and I hoped to have her do the same for the One Thousand Thousand project.

I did this little set of 8 pieces and I went back and forth between loving it and hating it and once I got it to a place that was not hating it I stopped. I've learned to quit while I'm ahead and am even able to do that every once in a while and rather than risk ruining the entire set I paused to figure out what was missing. 

There are a variety of ways to do photo image transfers and the way I know how is to print off some images onto acetate using an inkjet printer. From there you smear a little alcohol-based hand sanitizer onto the surface you want to transfer to and then flip the printed acetate over onto the alcohol gel you smeared on and then press down. The hand sanitizer gel lifts off the ink and it evaporates pretty quickly and the results are this ghosted image of the original. 

I don't like going for a perfect transfer and prefer that there is some hazy looking residue of an image left behind. [As opposed to some crisp or clean image.] It helps to add something to the pieces that are not quite completed and in this case it had the exact result I was hoping for. 

I used some vintage images of the Northern Lights and some meteor showers and volcanoes erupting and one from an old photo-postcard of the Golden Gate bridge. Scans of the finished pieces as well as some overview shots plus a few of the source images are just below. 

[Not sure what I'm doing wrong that the scans just never show the neon pink like they should. But, trust me on this one, these are incredible looking in person and are some of my new favorites.]

Watching the terrific documentary The Cruise the other day and the "the grid plan" scene reminded me that I'd not posted a whole lot about the grid technique I most often use to make these pieces. Why and how is this even a part of the project? 

​The idea of laying out the blank boards came early on after I'd been making individual pieces to trade with friends. I wanted to have some color down on the blindingly blank white paper boards just to get things going. I set a handful of boards on a table and arranged them together so I could spray paint across them all at the same time. The wind came up a bit [maybe it was from the spray paint can?] and caused some to flutter around and flip over. I used some rocks and masking tape to secure them to the table and later when I saw the cool, defined edges made from taping off parts of the cards I really liked it. The taped off sections were still white and I experimented with taping them off and the Grid Plan followed after that.

Aside from how terrific the photo borders looked I also loved the fact that I'd found a way to make a whole lot of these in one sitting as opposed to doing them one by one. 

Using a table with a larger surface meant more pieces could be produced and it was common to use a ping pong table that was stored in a friends garage to work on 75 to 100 pieces at a time. It was easier to tape these cards off if you had someone give you a hand and that’s where the real collaborative stuff happened.

​Often my friends and I would meet after school or on the weekends and make more cards. A few of us would get the ping-pong table all set up with the cards taped off in a grid and then we’d just start in with painting. 

We’d just talk and have drinks and goof around as we painted across the entire surface with a goal in mind of covering up the blue painters tape and removing the memory of there being separate pieces but were able to see it as a whole. ​

I've been working towards the seemingly absurd goal of producing one million original, hand-made works of art for a long, long time. Over the years I've collaborated with a number of friends and fellow artists to create work for the edition and just recently the project has reached the The First Third.  

​While this isn’t a million pieces of art 333,333 paintings is still a whole lot and it’s worth reflecting on in some way. To celebrate The First Third of this monstrous endeavor we've planned a retrospective of the past work and will be exhibiting thousands and thousands and thousands of new and selected pieces from the project. 

The elusive Christopher Dyer will be in attendance is flying in for the week and we'll be producing a number of collaborative pieces for the show. 

We look forward to seeing you there.

The little set that I did yesterday is one I'm really pretty happy with. It's been a little while since I was genuinely pleased by a particular batch and it was fun seeing how these took shape. 

I'm still stuck on using the fluorescent pink Sakura solid paint markers. The pink is just something I'm drawn to lately and the Sakura solid paint markers are great. 

I added some small areas of encaustic for texture and depth and even though I'm sure I'm not doing a proper encaustic technique I'm winging it and getting what I want out of the process.

Scans of the individual pieces along with some overview photos showing some of the progress are just below.

A small set of pieces from Katherine that were completed on December 26, 2015. She used some image transfers of her photos from Europe over an acrylic background then topped that off with some layers of beeswax. 

These are really rich and lovely and the stuff done in encaustics is hard to beat.

I've been working on the One Thousand Thousand project for a long, long time. In years past a big part of the process involved working with other artists to sort of push one another to do things they'd not normally/immediately consider and having other styles and techniques kind of imposed on you definitely facilitates growth. So as much as it has been a personal project it's also been a hugely collaborative effort for sure. I've roped a lot of people in to participate in the project and if you know me then chances are I've stuck a paintbrush in your hands and said to have a go at it.

There have been plenty of instances where other artists took to the project and produced a series of pieces on their own and the cool part of it is to see how it takes on a new life with them. One recent example is when I last visited my Very Good Friend Kim in St. Louis. I'd been hounding her for years to consider doing some work for the project. She was gracious enough years ago to have worked on a piece I did for my 52 Weeks project [She did Week 36 here:  ] and I hoped to have her do the same for the One Thousand Thousand project.

This was especially important as I had just reached the milestone of 333,333 pieces and was hoping for some shift in things after The First Third. As I saw/see it this next phase on the way to a million would almost require other work from other artists. I was getting burned out to a degree and was worried I'd end up making crummy work or repeating myself or whatever. So the Second Third seemed like a great time to kind of just be kind of a curator for the project and usher in a phase where I really sat back some and included more work that was done by other artists in contribution towards the edition. And when I was in St. Louis visiting friends and family I really ramped up my pitch with Kim. I left her with supplies and some additional pieces I'd not yet completed she agreed to give it a shot.

The plans for having another go at the 52 Weeks project are coming along. I'm finishing up a doc that describes the process and I will pass that along to everyone that wants to give the project a shot. In the interim it's maybe a good idea to do a couple of test runs and get in the habit of doing the work.

Since it's Sunday maybe start keeping your written weekly journal/notes/log and keep any found objects or items or ephemera you've come across during the week. Sometime before next Sunday you'll use those things to work out some assemblage as a visual diary for that week.

I asked Dyer the other day to describe the early days of the One Thousand Thousand project. This is what he sent:

​This project started out of that leftover optimistic field of vision you have when you were a kid, a mindset in which fireman, astronaut, and fighter pilot were completely reasonable occupational goals that in your teenage years wears just as dumb and unrealistic into lofty audacity of writing the great American novel, start the next beat generation, redefine rock & roll or in the case of McHenry and I, “let’s make a million paintings.”
 
In our minds, at the time, that was a completely rational and bulletproof idea. On the level of that idealistic horse blinder mentality that generals in battle subscribe to when they keep telling the troops “we will all be home by Christmas.”
 
We honestly believed this project would take no more than a couple of years. What the hell were we thinking? A million? Holy christ ghost! As Jason has said while “a million” is a low end term nowadays, in actual production it’s a goddamn feat of unbelievable endurance.
 
I can assure you that we are going to see this through however long it takes. We are of stubborn Missouri “show me” stock and fueled by a dumb blind work ethic best stated by a quote from Hemingway:
 
 “Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut.”
 
Dares and determination aside, what I have come to find of great beauty with this project is that it provides me with a lasting connection with my dearest friend Jason. We all have had rare snow leopard, real deal holyfield friendships that with time, distance and difference have faded into a background of fond memory. That has never happened to us. Want to keep someone in your life hell or high water, my advice – agree to make a million paintings with them.
 
Over the years, this project has afforded us opportunities to connect with a great vast cross section of truly amazing people who thought making art a foreign concept. What I have always thought grand about this project is the vaudeville magic trick element to it that reveals the mildly uncelebrated fact that we all have at least one good painting in us (or maybe even a million.)

We're preparing to have another go at the 52 Weeks project and the idea is to start at the beginning of the year. Maybe sooner but there's still a bit of prep work to be done. The box frames we used last time were pre-manufactured and this time we're making our own. So far a small handful of people have tentatively signed on to do the project too and you're invited to do the same.

In looking back on it I'd still say that the 52 Weeks project was one of the more important bodies of work I've ever done. It was a big undertaking on many levels. It required a serious commitment of time and energy to devote a full year to really just stripping yourself naked in front of anyone that passed by. 

Okay. So maybe if you're interested in doing the project along with a few others then let me know. All the contact info is here if you don't already have it.

You can read some old Intro Notes from the early stages of the project and by all means check out the page [and any other info you can find] on my heroine Candy Jernigan.

We expect there to be a couple of hundred pieces done for this set and maybe more depending on time. Some of the pieces are being scanned now and we're including some of them here. [Along with some assorted photos of the overall process.]

I found this thing I'd written for the old online shop after some people received work that looked a little bit different than what it did in the photos.

The process of creating one million pieces of original art all by hand is tiring and time consuming enough. Then, when you lock yourself into offering some of those pieces up for sale you then end up having to photograph and scan and crop them all plus all of the things that come with posting them online. There are descriptions and conversations and it's as time consuming as it is rewarding. [I'm not complaining here at all, mind you.]

Scanning and all of that is mostly no fun to me at all. And I usually wait until I'm in some certain mood where my brain is okay with doing it for an hour or two and I take the energy as it comes. There are times when I'm in scanning mode that I just do a big batch of a hundred or so. Later on after I get some distance from the pieces themselves I get some urge to work on them a little bit more. Not a lot mostly but little additions or modifications that would probably go unnoticed if I didn't mention them. But, to be honest about it, I sometimes do get a bit carried away and the finished pieces might not look much like they did at the time I scanned them and posted them online.

I say this because it's something that is ultimately not the very best way to do things and, truthfully, it's entirely unreasonable to expect that everyone would be accepting of such an eccentricity. [Yup. Let's just be nice here and let it be called that, okay? An eccentricity.] You should receive the exact, precise same thing that you see to be the same thing that order and subsequently do receive.

I'm just making sure that you know that such a possibility does sort of exist for some of the work that's out there. [Posted prior to October 19, 2009] But in the future I'm never, ever going to bother them again once they are scanned and posted. Unless it somehow pains me to leave it otherwise and then I'll just remove it and rescan it.

So, yeah. If you've ordered anything prior to about a week ago then there stands a pretty good chance that your order might be a little different than what you expected. You'll invariably have received a couple of extra pieces because that's what I do with nearly every order. But the ones that you specifically ordered may somehow look different and I apologize up front about that. I'm not running some bait and switch thing. I just need to leave them alone after they are uploaded for sale. But, regardless of anything else, if you're not satisfied with them as they are when you receive them then please just let me know. I'll fix things to whatever degree satisfies you. [Who knows, maybe you'll like them the new way better?]

And  for any new orders I promise that I've taken steps to just leave the things alone as soon as I scan and post them. I've got a system in place to deter my compulsion to keep working on them and it really won't happen again. Or it won't happen too easily and if I do decide to make any changes I'll remove the old things and start from scratch. What you see will be what you get and I give you my word about that.

Just so you know.

A small set completed on February 6, 2015. A very good friend of mine welcomed his new daughter Frances into the world on this same day and I welcome her too.

Christopher and I have been best friends for decades and we've sent packages back and forth for about the entire time. So it was easy for him to send along the pieces that he did for the One Thousand Thousand project for me to scan and number and all the rest. 

Another set from him came in the mail the other day and included a note saying how much he liked the particular set and that one of the pieces was maybe his favorite of all time. So I figured I'd use a numbering stamp that wasn't used as often and I busted out this vintage numbering stamp I had laying around. And why it isn't used as often is because it's clunky and the ink is usually botched and it advances incorrectly. But it's really cool.

I didn't want to ruin the set and did a few test stamps to make sure it printed properly and then had at it. I'm glad they turned out at least okay. They're not as legible as the modern rubber stamps are but they have a whole lot more soul and are fitting for this really nice set. 

I've included a scan of the note as well as some of the test stamps and a photo of the set as they were being numbered. 

Back in October I got a call from my kid sister saying that my mom was being rushed to the hospital after suffering three heart attacks. I didn't think about anything and just hopped on a plane. At LAX I got word that she was undergoing triple bypass surgery and the whole trip to STL was filled with dread that I'd land to bad news. [I didn't.] My mom pulled through like a champ and I spent the next three weeks or so with her and my family.

Growing up I attended the Ferguson-Florissant school district and I spent decades in Ferguson. I know that city well and after hospital visiting hours were over I'd just spend the nights driving around and looking at the places where I grew up and I was able to see the protests that were planned for the month of October. I'd not been back for about a decade and it was surreal in so many ways.

I had a small set that was unfinished and since I hadn't made any new pieces for the project during my trip back home I finished these to fill in those empty slots.

I dated them each separately for every day I spent back home and the imagery I used is obvious. There's probably not some representation of the Gateway Arch in each piece. It's not typical of me to beat people over the head with my work but I felt like I wanted to at least recognize what I was feeling. I even added some titles to many from this set. [Kinloch, Canfield, Cornel, Spanish Lake, et cetera.]

Anyway, I'm not sure what I'll do with these but I really am happy with how they turned out.