a project that happened while painting

i was busy working on my three big paintings and there were janitors repainting walls in the painting studios (they were making them fresh and white for critiques). i went to get a drink and talk to my Mom on the phone, while out of the classroom i happened upon a number of gallon paint cans in the trash, opened one a little bit and found out that there was some paint in them. couldn't let that paint go to waste, so i dumped it on some wood panels:

these are out of order but i think you will get the idea.

this is what they looked like on the floor after putting on the found paint.

the next day i decided to paint on them some more with my left over house paint. after laying them out...

i decided to flip most of them upside down and add all of the other panels that i had collected before i put on the paint

these are my paint cans

after dumping on the paint i moved it with a brush until it was how i wanted and then i splashed some water on them

after drying for a while i stood them up to get some good drips

i ended up with 21 panels of various sizes

here are a few photos of the panels

next i took all of the panels down to the wood shop and cut them down to about 5x9 inches, ending up with about 155 panels

on Monday i hauled them all back down to the wood shop planning to cut them each into four pieces... once i started i realized that cutting them that small was too much (it would have made them too small) so i cut them all in half (to get them all the same i had to make 3 cuts on each piece) to end up with over 300 panels! i spent about 8 hours cutting. for my drawing class i displayed them like this:

for painting i tried another kind of display that really leaves them hidden. i put seven on the wall and the rest of them were installed on the floor in a straight line (if you look at one of my first blog entries you can see my installation of red books in my "repetition repetition" show and the relationship between that installation and this)