One day while I was driving on Hwy 12, I noticed a large hand painted A-frame sign on the shoulder of the road. It was about four foot square with red painted letters on a white painted field.

 

Large, loose text advertised a band, a dance, with the date, time and place. I drove by this sign every day for a couple of weeks; and then for two more weeks after the event had come and gone. By then it was laying face down by the roadside. So I stopped, slipped it into the bed of my pickup and took it home.

 

A couple of years down the road, I put it on the table saw, cut 3” strips, and cut the strips into 3” squares. There were about 400 squares. I put all the squares on a big worktable and turned them all right side up (the side with some red paint). I leaned over the table, gathered all I could in my arms, and randomly formed them together into a rectangle. Immediately I began to see figurative elements fitting together. It was so amusing and engaging, almost magical how the figures began fitting into themselves, one momentary narrative after another. By the end of the day there were these 14 pieces, 14 gestural moments or narratives.

 

To the extent that they all came out of a single sign and that they all took shape spontaneously in a single block of time, I’m showing them as a single work.
It was a complete process, whole and unitary. 
E pluribus unum

 

Alan Azhderian