Backdrop for a Rock show stage. Approximately 20 x 40 feet. Acrylic on butcher paper.  More bad photos taken, I believe, by one of the carpenters, shortly before the piece was finished. In the 70s I did many of these, as Rock and Roll was a steady business. It made for a hellacious childhood. A typical job would entail a week of my painting the exact work to scale, since once the real work began one was working blind: then I would hire and train painters, erect the scaffolding and pray that it held us all as we darted all over, while I shot up and down, checking, directing and painting like mad to get the thing done a few minutes before showtime. The colors were always designed to change with maximum effect as the stage lights changed. Usually I would simultaneously design and build/paint/sculpt whatever I decided was needed to transform the entire auditorium to match the show’s theme (a jungle, for example). -All told, the jobs would mean I didn’t sleep for two weeks. This one I remember was for a big New Year’s Eve show (1997-1998). It had several layers and levels including one for dancing girls, and the clock had a platform and a working full-sized door for when an Emcee emerged (with a bomb -to be tossed back and forth among the dance line) for the midnight countdown. Some of work I did in those days was painted on 18 x 60 foot panels from Christo’s Running Fence, which several sharp promoters bought from the ranchers whose land it ran through; unfortunately the coarse nylon would warp, which added another calculation to my designing phase. Either because the promoter was miserly or for expediency, this backdrop was made of many rolls of heavy butcher paper I glued together.

see below and hoover wherever for enlargement