Random 1979 – 2019
Random 1979 – 30x40 – Mixed media
I wanted to note the anniversary of a work I did 40 years ago this month. I had gone back to school at Metro State College (now a University) here in Denver. I was in Robert Mangold's sculpture class and had been musing on the theme of Connect-the-Dots for a while and was trying to push the concept as far was I could. I was a huge fan of Christo and Jeanne-Claude's who had erected the big orange Valley Curtain near Rifle, CO 7 years earlier. Like him I wanted to involve as many people as I could in the art making process and also work in a scale beyond the boundaries of a museum or gallery. I decided on the theme of a 'random' drawing (I had done several other more figurative pieces). I fashioned 100 - 6" circles out of Masonite, an I/8" thick untempered MDF board. Painted them black and stenciled white numbers on each one. Over 3 days, October 15, 16 & 17, in front of the Auraria campus library, I handed the 'dots' out to anyone who wanted to participate. (The red dot in the middle indicates the origin of the drawing at the library near downtown Denver). To document, I recorded everyone's name address and phone number, plotting each dot at their address on a USGS map of Denver and the Front Range. My intent was to reconnect with the participants once a year to see how the drawing changed as people moved over time. One individual told me he kept his in his car so he was changing the drawing all the time! Alas, this was in the days long before the internet, and tracking down each of the 100 students proved to be a futile endeavor. So the piece stands alone, and I can only imagine how it has evolved over the years. Christo's Curtain took 28 months to create and only lasted 28 hours before it was torn apart by the wind. My piece is also in the wind, but I like to think its still going. I did meet Christo and Jeanne-Claude the following year when they did an artist in residence at Colorado State University. Also in 1980 this piece was included in an exhibit of artists using maps, entitled cARTography at the John Michael Kohler Art Center in Sheboygan, Wisconsin. Christo and William T Wiley were also in the show. Random has never seen the digital 'light of day', so I present it to you here, 40 years on...
