As an offshoot of my grid drawings I've been thinking of the urban grid and particularly Chicago's street grid which has as much regularity as almost any other American city. So I thought I'd try a drawing of the city layout and I've been wanting to work larger and this thing ended up
very large. The drawing is actually on a oversized box opened up and flattened, and it's overall dimensions are 50 x 80 inches. To move the finished drawing from my studio to Las Manos Gallery I was able to fold it back up to it's original configuration but even at that size I had a hard time transporting it. It would not fit in a cab, nor into most conventionally sized cars. My friend Mieke has a small open ended truck and we finally worked out a time for her to pick up the drawing. Comes to pass that the time we chose for the move was the morning of the Chicago Marathon. I happen to live in an area where the marathon, at about it's eighth mile, surrounds me within a block on three sides. I'm at the norther apex of the race, and it's turning south around me. It has always been fun to head down to the street and watch the first part of the race. There is a lot of excitement and energy with the officials, spectators, music on the ground and the helicopters buzzing around us in the air. The wheel chair participants usually move through first, followed shortly after by the elite runners. The problem is, after that point the crowd of runners grows quickly and geometrically. By about a half an hour into the race the street is packed with runners and it is impossible to cross the street for a good ninety minutes. This of course is the time we had planned for Mieke to pick up the drawing. We devised a plan that I would walk the drawing two block from my home and she would pick it up outside the area of the race. The only real challenge to that plan would be how to cross the street.
