Extinction Burst

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A plan for a free standing floor frame, measuring 85.5″ x 107.5″. It will eventually contain the 240 “In Search of Perfection” currency erasures. These erasures were made in 2007-8. I was obsessed trying to get a perfectly blank piece of paper from a $1 bill. After many months of scraping, sanding, perseverance and patience, the idea defeated itself. I can now generate perfect erasures. I haven’t known what to do with the “non-perfect” bills until I saw Kippinbergers, “For the love of a Canary”,(below).

To realize this piece and cover the materials expense I would like to propose a crowdfunding campaign in 2016 entitled, ” A Question of Value”. Since this piece displays only $1.00 blank bills I thought it would be appropriate to limit contributions to $1.00 and focus on building up and connecting to a base of people interested in the nature of value. I would like the work to be a collaboration. The grid pattern can contain 234 bills (responses) per side for a total of 468 diverse one word responses to the question, “What do you value?” Single word responses can be inked with currency dust and installed into the piece for an exhibiton and afterward offered to the contributor as an incentive and replaced by one of the original “perfection” blanks.

The bills are individually framed in custom two-sided nesting frames that can slide in and out of the overall grid and will be interchangeable/arrangeable. Each bill is framed in a large Mylar sleeve and is viewable from both sides.
This big frame can hang on the wall or free stand in the gallery space. It will be made from Cherry, Butternut, Pine, Spruce, Blood-wood, Maple, and Basswood.

When erasing the currency for Extinction Burst, I carefully and obsessively separated the green and black inks into 5 shades each from dark to light. I plan on pushing the ink into 10 tall 1/8″ glass pipettes and somehow incorporating those with the big frame.