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.