Skowhegan Zine

I don’t know why I had to have it - this huge, brand new truck tire rim that for some reason lay at the curb at 23rd St. and Third Ave.  So I drove my father’s delivery van from Brooklyn into the city and picked it up, not surprised that it was still there. Still living at home, I brought it to the basement of the dry cleaners which I used as a studio. It was quiet there at night.

I always loved industrial objects; intrigued by the relationship between function and aesthetics.

At SVA, I had a class with Jean Dupuy, that combined art with technology and we built a machine that, with a cylinder of mirrors and a laser, projected a continuous electronic rendition of sound waves around the room. We were to bring in sounds for the machine to project.

Back in the basement, setting the large heavy tire rim on edge, I spun it on the concrete floor. It started loudly at first, and as it settled, it sped up in progressively shorter and softer intervals:

ERummm, ERummm, ERummm,Rummm,RummRummm,RummmRummm,Rummm,Rummm Rummm,Rummm Rumm.

until it stopped!

I recorded it several times and brought it to Dupuy’s class. The next week, Jean brought

in music from Africa that presented the same rhythmic intervals.

Around the same time, in Sal Scarpitta’s class, I was building constructivist sculptures with ten foot 2 x 4s, held together not with fasteners but with intersecting forces and gravity. As much as Sal liked these, he told me I needed to paint.

Back in the basement, I eyed the tire rim.  On a worn piece of foam-core, I began painting its dull silver ellipse against the dark concrete floor. I realized that what my left eye was seeing was different from my right. In order to complete the circle, I mentally stationed points on the ellipse as if it were a clock, continuously relating 3 to 9, 6 to12, 2 to 8 and so on. When I brought the painting in to Scarpitta, he was enthused, saying I’d drawn perfect circles in space.

Toward the end of the year there were notices around to sign up for John Button’s figure painting class next term. I went to see him but he said he would have to see my work first. We went downstairs to my locker and when he saw the tire rim painting, he immediately approved me, and told me to look up three painters: Edwin Dickinson, Walter Murch and Philip Pearlstein.

A week or so later, I noticed signs (which I had not seen before), warning us to clean out our lockers by a certain date. It was now the day after. When I saw my locker was empty I went down to the janitors office to inquire about my things.

It was too late.The only thing worth saving he said was a picture of a tiger which now hung above his desk .

A year later, John Button was instrumental in getting me into Skowhegan