Drawing with a Drill

Sometime last year I was at a show of paintings by David Choe with some of the Drawger folks.  There was a video in the gallery which showed Choe punching himself in the nose, dripping blood onto a piece of paper and painting with the blood.  Ah, art.

At the time, it got me thinking, what's the oddest, perhaps dumbest, thing I've done while making my work.  I've done a lot of things, burning sculptures when they're finished to change their character, leaving paintings out all winter to see how they would weather, etc.  But "Drawing with a Drill" stuck in my mind for some reason.

I was in college and working on about 60 masonite panel paintings.  I was trying all sorts of things on them, cutting the wood, sanding it, etc.  At one point I just started drilling holes in them.  Then I looked at my drill and a piece of charcoal I had in my other hand, and the logical thing to do was of course to stick the charcoal in the drill.

I stuck the charcoal in, twisted the torque, and turned the sucker on.  The charcoal jumped all over the place.  I must have replaced four pieces of vine charcoal to do the drawing above.  It made this quirky, jumpy line.  I then proceeded to "Paint with a drill".  Yes, a brush full of paint, going in circles, about 50 miles a minute.  What a total disaster that was....still cleaning the paint off the ceiling.   

You can't say I don't follow through on ideas.....