Sol LeWitt Story

The second version of this painting that I worked on.

This is for people who have nothing to do today. And to mention that I am thankful for some of my weirder experiences.

Back on Nov 22, 2016 while blogging about the joy of tedious jobs I mentioned that I had a job watching paint dry that I really enjoyed. Of course, that was only part of the job. Pictured is the two-story mural by Sol LeWitt that is in one of the Wells Fargo buildings in Des Moines. Sol LeWitt was a pioneer in conceptual art. He designed works that could be executed by teams of artists rather than doing the actual work himself. The Des Moines Art Center (our local art museum) bought this work and the first version is layers of ink applied directly to one of the walls in the museum. Over the years, the colors have darkened. Different pigments were used on this project and the colors are even brighter than what they appear to be in this image.

When Wells Fargo needed something for a wall in a new building, the DM Art Center discussed the possibility of doing a second version with Sol LeWitt and he said OK. He sent an assistant to Des Moines to manage the project. It was going to take about 3 weeks to complete and they needed to find people who were available for full time work during those 3 weeks. I didn't know anything about the project until I got the phone call from the director of the museum asking me if I was interested in working on the project. While I had taught at the museum for several years, and had met the director, I was surprised to get a personal phone call from him. I thought to myself, if he is calling me, they must be desperate to find people to work on this project and for such low pay, so I guess I better help them out. As I recall, we were paid less than $10 per hour and the director was apologetic about the skimpy budget.

I arrived for work on the first day and met a very interesting man, Hidemi, who worked for Sol LeWitt. There were 4 other men, all artists whom I had met at the Art Center. I was 50-55 and they were all 30-somethings. Hidemi was closer to my age, but younger. What does age have to do with this? I had not considered what it meant to do work where you had to climb scaffolding. There are two types of scaffolding. The type of scaffolding used for this project, requires workers to climb on the outside of the supports which are vertical and each level has a little gate that you open which also keeps you from falling off. Climbing a vertical ladder is more difficult than the other type of scaffolding which has attached stairs. Also, being able to access different levels is only partly helpful. You must stretch to reach high spots and stoop, kneel, and belly-flop to reach low spots. And then there is that most difficult area where you have to reach the spot obstructed by the floor of the scaffolding. I am not prone to any kind of physical activity, so I knew this was going to be challenging.

Uff da.

The first thing we had to do was draw the lines on the wall. Hidemi gave me the job of creating paper templates. He showed me how to do it starting with plain paper, making folds and figuring out how to make it all square. I knew this was a recipe for disaster, so I got in my car and drove to the art supply store and bought large sheets of graph paper. When I returned he asked me where I had gone. I showed him my perfect templates and he said OK. I had the impression that he was not accustomed to people just charging off on their own.Then he said he had forgotten to bring thread, so we had to find a spool of thread. What I learned about thread and murals was worth the skimpy paycheck. It is the coolest thing ever to be able to create perfect straight lines with thread and masking tape. You just pull it taut and tape it down and voila, you have perfect straight lines. I have used thread -in place of guide lines- on numerous occasions and passed the tip along which has helped many people with the logistics of ruling seating charts and posters - or when writing quote on walls.

We worked in teams of two and my team made the only mistake in the plotting of the squares. It was a really bad mistake and while Hidemi caught the mistake in time to fix it, there are still some tell-tale signs that I can point out. Hidemi did not make us feel bad about the mistake, but he also was not generous with any kind of positive comment. He was a steady stream of tips on how to make the work better. At the very end, the stronger, more athletic guys had to hang off the outside of the scaffolding to paint the black borders. We did not mask off all the squares, so there were some dots of splashed ink that had to be removed. This was beyond tedious and body breaking to reach these areas and carefully remove the black with an X-acto knife. This was also the last bit of work and people were burned out and finding excuses to not show up. I think I was the only one who showed up faithfully for full days and chipped away at the splats. One time, he passed by and said, "Good." It was the only time I heard him say anything close to approval. Although he might have been complimenting the heck out of the other guys in a very quiet way. He was like a ninja the way he scrambled around on the scaffolding. You'd think he was on the lower level and then - bam- there he was, on the top level looking over your shoulder. The rest of us were so clunky when we were going up and down that the whole scaffolding would shake a bit. When you moved from level to level, you had to carry your bucket of ink along. This added a layer of difficulty to the climbing.

The actual painting was a process using ink that was mixed up in 5-gallon buckets (or maybe 10-gal - they were about 18-in tall, but the ink filled only about a third of the bucket. Red, yellow, blue and black. Each bucket had a rag and there was a specific process for swirling the rag to mix up the ink which settled very quickly, wringing out the rag, then making a uniform wadded shape that fit in your hand. Each section was assigned a color and the colors were built up of different layers of color. A simple blue shape might be 4 applications of blue, and each application had three layers. the first layer was swished on in loopy figure eights. The second layer was daubed. The third layer was another swish. So, there was a total of 12 layers for a plain blue section and you had to wait for each layer to dry before adding the next layer. I do not recall how long it took to dry. Maybe 15 minutes.

Some colors were built up using combinations of colors and there was a recipe or road map for each square with designation like Red, Blue, Red, Black. At one time I remembered which color had the most layers, but I have forgotten. I believe there are books that have the recipes for Sol LeWitt's artwork. Each section had to be taped off. Some sections had many more pieces to be taped off and took much longer. The tape had to be sealed with a couple layers of clear sealer before the ink layers began. At first, there was always an area that needed work. Towards the end, working on the last sections, there were times we just had to sit and wait for sections to dry. I remember that someone came from the local paper to do a story on the project and wanted some action shots. We were at a point where we were waiting for the ink to dry and I think we were a bit surly about why we were not going to drag ourselves over and pretend we were working....somewhere I have a copy of the article...

I wore the same jeans every day and they completely wore out. If the project had lasted longer, I would have needed another pair of pants. I remember being tired at the end of each day, but did not ache so much that it was painful to go to work. Towards the end, all the climbing was easier. I did find a pair of knee pads that I wore every day. And -yes- I know I sound like a completely wimpy, milquetoast, pampered ding-dong.

On the first day of the job, Hidemi asked us to write down our names and addresses. I figured we would get a personal thank you note from the studio of Sol LeWitt. Uh - no - thank you note. Something much, much better. An original gouache painting, signed by Sol LeWitt. Yowza. It was a spectacular thank you and more than made up for the skimpy paycheck.

Another funny tidbit. Over the course of the three weeks, I kept asking Hidemi if he wanted to go to the museum and see the original work. He kept declining. Finally, towards the end, I insisted that we all treat ourselves to lunch at the Art Center restaurant and see the original. Hidemi agreed. We trooped in to eat lunch in our super grubby work clothes alongside the ladies-who-lunch in their super not grubby clothes. Then we trooped over to see the original. Hidemi pondered it for a while and then said, "I should have come over and looked at it earlier." I have always wished I knew why he said that. But, by that time, I learned that he was a man of few words and asking questions seemed too intrusive. Maybe I just didn't know the proper way to ask questions. I asked him if he wanted to look around the museum. He said, "No." Then I asked if he wanted to stop and see my studio. I had something to show him. He said, "OK." What I wanted to show him was a drawing I had done when I was right out of college. It was a version of a Sol LeWitt piece that I had seen in an art magazine. It had a little code for how to construct the piece. It was made up of layers of Red, Yellow, Blue and Black parallel lines. He studied it, as if he was checking to see if I had followed the recipe. He said, "Yes. You got it right." Thank you. (Rolling my eyes. I didn't need him to tell me whether I can follow a recipe. Although he might have been recalling that I was one of the two people who were responsible for the biggest mistake on the wall. I think he should be included - three of us are responsible - I guarantee you, if I had been project manager, I would have proofed those pencil lines very carefully before proceeding with the next step - she said with her 20-20 hindsight.)

And with that, we were finished and my name is on the little plaque that tells who the artist is and who executed the work.

Not the end of the story. A few years later, another building in town needed a mural. They contacted me and I said, "Sorry, I am too old to work on scaffolding. However, I think I know some people who would be happy to work on it if you pay them a decent wage. So, I rounded up a bunch of artists and negotiated an hourly rate that was closer to $25-35 and they were all very happy to get started. I went down on the first day just to check in and give them tips. I noticed that it was a three story mural and I could see that the additional height would make it very dangerous for the workers to be climbing on the outside. I did not check the OSHA rules, but I was pretty certain that it would not have been OK with them. I recalled that on the first project, there were office workers who could see us working and  they were so concerned about the leaning over the edge to reach areas they called someone who came and told us to stop being so reckless. Somehow I convinced the project manager on the second project to call the scaffolding company and get a stairway added to the outside. The second Sol LeWitt mural in Des Moines was much easier because each layer was painted. I do not recall if they did more than one coat of paint on each section.

The sad part of the story is that shortly after this project was started, Sol LeWitt passed away. So, while the workers were paid better, they did not get the special thank you artwork from Sol. Apparently he did not have a stack of thank you paintings sitting around.

So, that's my story.
If I ever get tired of envelopes I think I might make a quilt that looks like the painting.

The original version of the piece that is in the Des Moines Art Center - that I did not work on.
I worked on the second version of this one..

The second Sol LeWitt piece that I did not work on.