QUESTIONING

No-o-o. I just meant that if you could line up all the people in the world and have them make a painting you would have that many potential art works.

Oh.

Unless you get into the business of saying , "This one is an art work but this one isn't."

Uhm hm.

Why is it an art work because this person has done it? Why is this an art work? Why is this one over here an art work?

Yeah.

Why?

Or is it?

She would say it isn't art. I know people who would say that none of these are art works.

Yeah.

And it has to do with intent. It has to do with the knowledge of the ah.... discipline of art--ahm...

In my case, I probably have some strong opinions. But I don't want to ask any of those questions. Why should I ask when I'm enjoying all this?

Yes, that's a very nice answer. That's a very nice answer.

If I begin asking I could be as opinionated as the next person.

Yes.

But I don't really enjoy my opinionated self.

All right, yeah.

That's the only thing I was good at in school too--was my art. [laughs] Which never ah...Like I used to get ten out ten on art. Well how can you do that? You can never get full points, really.

Well, there...

Well, anyway I used to get ten out of ten.

Well, there isn't such a thing as perfection in art then? Are you trying to say that there's no such thing as perfection when you're....

[Drags the words] I don't know. I don't think so. Is there? I don't know. [pauses] I don't know. I don't know how you would judge it. But anyway that's the only thing I'd ever get full points on.

For anything that required perspective you could be 100%, probably. Or not?

Right. That's true.

But other than that, I don't think you could say, "This is 100% perfect."

One thing that I know I got 10/10 on and I think I still have it is....I remember in about grade 7 or 8 our teacher put up a vase of gladiolas for us to sketch and shape and we were supposed to learn shading I guess. And I got 10/10. Now, how can that be? I can't do those perfect the way they were there. But anyway she must have thought it was good enough.

RISK

Everyone has a personal motivation for copying and I thought it was interesting that as a sign company there'd be certain parameters and motivations. It would be interesting if you took one and just kind of worked with it. And for the other four I would bring in some unusual print outs that would put me at risk a bit. But I'm used to that as an artist. When I ordered lighted signs from the States I never knew what would come back.

Exactly.

I would just talk to the sales person on the phone and ah, we'd fax things back and forth.

Did you see that?

No I Haven't seen these.

I scanned it and brought it into the computer and got it to do an automatic trace.

Yeah.

And that's kind of what came out.

I scanned this actually on the computer and then I just did an auto-trace basically. So it traced out what it wanted to and then I just simplified some of it. I just let it go to see what it would do and that's how I came up with that.

Well, I like the idea of just "letting it go". You let the computer go. You gave the computer free reign to do its own thing.

Right.

I kind of like the way it did the colours too.

But it would have done that one completely different from this one.

Yes, well, maybe we could do the five that way then.

So if I was willing to take the chance on something less straightforward than that or this, I'd commit myself cost-wise and accept whatever image came out, you'd be willing to go ahead and try it?

I mean we couldn't reproduce this exact gradation here or it would be very difficult to do that.

No. I don't expect that. In fact the technology's going to dictate and there will be some surprises.

Uhm hm.

It's something like putting pots in the kiln. You don't quite know ...

How it's going to turn out.

How the glaze is going to melt.

I won't know what copies will come in.

Like get it down to 2 colours

Yeah.

Or what you can do is have that image behind as a back plate and like you say where you cut this out and then router-trace around all the dark areas, sand blast that and put that over top of it and what that will do is that'll have some of these colours come through the sand blast and give it different shapes. Because the sand blast isn't opaque. It allows whatever is put behind it to show through. There are different variations here definitely. Or just sand blast this whole area that stands out. But then when you put that over top of this image these areas, these regions of different colours are going to come through.

You can sand blast them at different levels too.

You could do that too.

Yeah.

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