I’ve been painting a lot over the last few days.  Listening to Phillip Glass and John Adams has put me in a Rothkovian mood, with a little Franz Kline and Alexander Calder thrown in.  I took some time the other day to do some reading…  a short biography of Alexander Calder.  He’s long been a favorite of mine.  Back in the 70s, I bought a signed-in-plate print of one of his pieces for $60 from American Express, of all places.  I recently saw the same piece offered on eBay for $850.

Last night, I started to finish off one of the canvases I completed on Monday.  I stuffed it with plastic grocery bags and tried to sew it closed, but the four layers of canvas were too much for the sewing machine and the needle bent and broke.  I suppose the fact that it was probably at least forty years old had something to do with it.  I went to a fabric store today and bought three heavy duty needles, manufactured for denim and canvas, so we’ll see how they do.

I’m going to be installing the trellises tomorrow, with a few of my canvas panels.  I spent some time putting together a table with the randomly-selected squares in the grid and will do the orientation selection for all of them later on today.  There are fourteen weeks between now and the end of the project.  I’ll be moving the trellises every two weeks.  There are 28 squares in my grid and with a total of 21 locations for the three trellises, so the odds of some repeats were pretty high.  As it turns out, seven of the 28 squares will be used twice.

Tomorrow, I should have some photos to include of the trellises in place.