20 lines a day

this set of drawings/works on paper evolved through an idea that came out of a dictum that stendahl offered to budding writers  – to write 20 lines a day regardless if they were genius or terrible. harry mathews followed the idea towards a book of the same name, and after michael ned holte showed me the mathews book i wanted to use stendahl’s text as a score. when i arrived at chinati, i started shooting video of 20 straight edges, every morning until after a few days when the experience began to feel as if i were on autopilot. i then started to think about drawings, starting with 20 lines and then seeing how things might evolve. after working with rulers, i felt the need to find some way to get outside of the ways that i already knew. one morning, i was sitting in the yard behind the studio and looking at the sea of twigs and small branches that had fallen on the tree. i realized that, of course, lines are not always straight, and so i picked up 20 twig/sticks randomly and began to copy their contours with a brush and sumi ink. thus, all of the drawings began with 20 brushed ink lines, and each includes color marks based on the judd vowel structure that i also used for the paintings and sculpture. the works on paper also include the presence of a rubbing of the surface of the judd designed bench in the studio, which was then collaged onto the drawing. the last image is of one of the mornings’ 20 gathered lines.