Interesting connections.

I was discussing my new work on paper, a 7x8 foot painting on collaged paper, and made a neat connection about it and my life experiences.

I was talking about how my past two main jobs have had a lot of entropy inherent in them. I spent 4 1/2 years at Abt wondering "How the hell does anyone run an office like this? When is this place gonna fall apart?"

It was obvious to me, at 21, with no experience in business administration that things were not being run well, in fact, they were being run totally illogically.

Now (8 years later) the Hadley office seems to be falling apart for real, since they just laid off 5 supervisors from a staff of maybe 8 or 9.

My current job, which is run by far more competent people, seems to have too much of a laissez faire attitude (which I'm presently exploiting...) towards their employees. There's too little discipline, and our product is showing it. Hmmm....

How does this relate to my painting? I'm using delicate and old paper, newspapers, comic books, old dress patterns, 300 year old books (that's actually some of the studier stuff in it!), and gluing sheet to sheet not necessarily to a very suitable surface.

The heavier this thing got as I was constructing it, the more it would tear at stress points. Even though I went and strengthened the edges, it still is pretty weak in places.

This piece reflects that entropy. Its designed to fall apart. Not designed to, per se, but I'm pushing it as far as I can until it disintegrates. Its not designed for what I'm using it for. I built it too big to withstand its own weight. I know all the flaws inherent in its design, but I'm moving forward still the same.

Like the jobs I've had.

Its a fun series to be working on.