Injury Time

Around the time I finished the Fourth of July series, the 1994 World Cup was in progress, and I watched almost every televised match. With the close games (ties or one goal leads), I found the most exciting time was when the clock reached the end of regulation, but play continued. In soccer, the referee on the field keeps the time, and stops the clock during play stoppages, such as for injuries. So even when the scoreboard reaches the end of regulation, there is often additional time left. This is commonly called injury time or stoppage time. Announcers would estimate about how much time that was, but no one knew for sure except the man with the whistle. I always watched these moments intently, waiting to see if the score would hold or if one team would score and change that, never knowing exactly when the end would come.

On July 4, 1994 I cut the last block, printed it, hung it on my studio wall as the end of the complete set, and had a shot of tequila from a bottle one of the grads had. And with that, a project I had devoted a year to was over. It was hard to stop. I had trained myself to look for art inspiration, to find my print of the day, and the habit was not going to be easy to break. I considered producing a new series, which I gave the title Injury Time, which would continue the same format for an unknown period of time. It would eventually end, but just like those soccer games, I couldn't say exactly when. But in the end I decided to let the series end on its anniversary. Still, the habit was hard to break. Shortly after, I did another short series using the same black and white format, images from an outdoors store in town called Shawnee Trails. One of the painting grads worked there, and it was full of interesting objects. The eight prints shown above are that series. They look like images that could have been part of the Fourth of July, but were chosen for the visual rather than a connection with a particular day. Some of the prints weren't bad, but there seemed to be no point to the series. One might call it a bit of a hangover.

The ability to be inspired by everyday things around me remained, and has influenced my art to this day.

I don't expect to be adding any new prints to this blog, but there may be some additional entries. I recently had the 4th of July animated film transferred to digital. I'd love to do a little editing and get it posted on line- Information will appear here if and when that happens. If there are any more showings of the whole set, I'll post news and photos of that. And I may decide to do some additional blogs like this one, showing some of my other completed series work.