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CANTON (Stars)

McDonalds Drive Thru – Gloucester, Massachusetts

Tire tracks from cars pulling through the McDonalds drive thru.

FIELD (Stripes)

Rockport Elementary School - Rockport, Massachusetts

Footprints from 4th and 5th grade students walking across an outdoor basketball court while leaving school at the end of the day.

CANTON DETAIL

CANTON STORY

This section was created at a McDonalds drive thru in Gloucester, MA. I didn’t get permission to do it so needed to “hide” the plywood so that people wouldn’t see it in time to drive around it. I sprayed the plywood with adhesive and put it on the ground just around the corner from where drivers placed their order. I then went and sat in my car in the parking lot and watched as cars drove over the plywood to pick up their food.

I wanted this section to be pretty dark so I reapplied the adhesive two or three times - each time sneaking up so that the window attendant didn’t see me, spraying the adhesive, placing the plywood where drivers couldn’t see it and then sneaking back to my car. Eventually, one of the drivers must have complained to the worker inside the window. As I was watching from my car I saw a McDonalds worker step out of the back door (right next to my plywood), pick up the plywood ad start to take it back inside.

I jumped out of my car and ran over to the worker and quickly tried to explain that the piece of wood was a part of an art project and that I needed it. Before they could respond I grabbed the plywood and ran back to my car and left.

FIELD DETAIL

FIELD STORY

This section is one of the first ones that I created. I was still experimenting with how to best capture different marks and thought that this would just be a test. It turned out so well that I decided to include it in the set.

The marks were created by 4th and 5th grade students leaving school at Rockport Elementary School in Rockport, MA where my so was going to school at the time.

All the students walk across the basketball court as they leave school. I placed the board on the basketball court and asked students to step on it and leave a footprint as they walked past. At first they were very tentative to step on the plywood but as soon as a couple students stepped and left a footprint they all rushed to leave their own print. There was all of a sudden a big crowd gathered around the plywood taking turns walking, jumping and stomping on the board.

I had to pull the plywood away from the group in order to make sure that some of the details would be visible and it didn’t get too “dirty”. They would have kept going. They seemed to love leaving their marks.