DRAFT

 

When I was in high school, 3 close friends and I decided that we would imitate Ed Ruscha's 1967 book Royal Road Test.   It was not so much that we were enthusiastic creators of pop art (though we likely could have given a good account of what the term meant) It was more that we wanted license to destroy heavy objects in extravagant ways.  Our first attempt (yes, we did this more than once) involved the theft of a math teacher's ancient, oversize Burroughs adding machine and the subsequent hurling of it from a speeding car on the closest expressway. It was during the school day, and one of our main goals was to achieve maximum destruction and still be back in time for our next class. It was a hurried, dangerous, and, frankly, borderline criminal affair. We got a few hilarious photos and had the experience of throwing what was left of the machine's carcass off the Dunn Memorial Bridge in downtown Albany. But, ultimately our lack of proper preparation made the photographic results unsatisfying. When we came back to Burroughs Road Test a year later, we finally got the kinds of photos we had wanted.  

 

In Situ is based on one of these photos.  I captured long time friend Rich Hulme examining a small metal piece of this second wrecked adding machine "in situ" where the impact had flung it: in the weeds by the side of road.  Yes, I had always loved this shot. There is something quintessentially Rich Hulme about it.  But later I came to recognize some themes of my later (more serious?) work.  The huge looming presence of the eye glasses may be what I liked most. The left side almost looks like the wrong end of a telescope with all those concentric rings around the eye.  I could go on about the process of seeing or the so called observer effect in quantum mechanics. The cliches applicable abound here.  But perhaps I should let the drawing speak for itself.

 

The lower portion of the image was quite chaotic and very difficult to organize.  I was quite satisfied with the way that the markers rendered the grass and weeds. The depiction of it all is accurate enough. But for me the way that this detail quickly breaks down on closer inspection into some of the more crude and random looking bits of gray I have ever drawn is particularly appealing. "Closer inspection" seems a central theme here, so maybe there is even a bit of meta going on too.  Generally I try to make images not much larger than life size. 115% is usually the upper limit.  In Situ is, however, much, much bigger.  I think this made the scene that much more surrealistic.