Randy Wood – the heavy edit

All those moments will be lost like tears in the rain. – Bladerunner

Richard Wright won the Turner Prize. It didn’t hurt him that he frequently destroys what he makes, which means like traditional sand painting, that work is unavailable for purchase. Because nobody’s in it for the money, everybody shares in the warm glow of the moment. Self-editing blue chips can get by on grants, patronage and prizes, as well as what they don’t toss.

What about artists of whom few have heard? When they make a habit of destroying their product, few care because few know.

Let me introduce Seattle’s Randy Wood. When he wants to, which isn’t often, he can paint images of rocks and trees that the amateurs of the Chinese literati tradition would have viewed with favor. Possibly as a homage to them, all of course dead, he sends the drawings crafted in their style to join them: dust thou art, or, in the case of one performance, bedding thou art.

At Soil in 2005, he presented a long glass case with drawings fanned out along the bottom and two rodents scurrying back and forth on top of them. During the course of the exhibit, the rodents chewed the drawings to pulp, which they used as bedding.

First day of They Will Be The Judge Of That:

Wood occasionally takes to the road with a performance he calls Bye Bye Little Drawing.

From his Web site:

It consists of myself sitting at a portable table, creating watercolors and ink drawings and, as soon as they dry, running them through a paper shredder.
People have strong reactions to the shredding of my own work. I’ve been asked to stop, some have offered to buy a piece before I destroy it, and children love to watch art get shredded.

I once asked if he’d save from the shredder a single line of trees whose leaves were a furry green. Like the man who wouldn’t help The Band find a place to lay their heads, no was all he said.