The Wall Drawing

In 1982, I worked on a Sol Lewitt wall drawing at David Bellman Gallery in Toronto. This story came to mind after I heard yesterday of the death of Mr. Lewitt. If I recall correctly, the gallery was on Peter St, perhaps just north of Adelaide. One of our teachers at York University asked me and my pal John if we would like to participate. We were part of a whole crew of people that were led by Mr. Lewitt's assistant at the time (sorry, I forget his name). Lewitt was in Europe somewhere and we never saw him.

The drawing was to be carried out on the walls of Bellman's big space based on a specific set of instructions. The images were squares, circles and triangles in different order across the walls. On some walls, the images were surrounded with a grey ink wash and on other walls the ink wash was applied within the figures. The ink was mixed up based on a specific formula and even the way we wiped the ink onto the wall had to be done in a certain way. Over everything was to be a grid done in 9H pencil. Have you ever seen a 9H pencil? Consider that a 4H pencil is very hard and makes a very light line on paper. 9H is rockhard. I recall clearly catching hell because I wasn't twirling the 9H pencil as I drew the grid lines, causing parts of the lines to be thicker than other parts (I swear you couldn't actually see this).

One of the highlights of the job was lunch. Bellman would take us out for fabulous lunches every day. We were art students and this was a big thing. It made up for not being paid for the gig.

Perhaps halfway through the job, we were applying ink wash to the wall, and stranger than strange, these large letters started to appear. It was the residue of a previous exhibition by another conceptual artist, Lawrence Weiner. Weiner's stock and trade was words, applied to walls in various materials. This particular piece appeared to have been applied in enamel paints, then covered over with gallery latex. When the ink was washed on, we could read the letters.

We thought this was fabulous - sort of an accidental collaboration between two conceptual art giants. LeWitt's assistant wasn't amused. He traced Sol down and came back with a decision. We cover everything, seal it, and start again. We bought drums of this nasty white shellac-based sealer and covered it the next day. I recall feeling very woozy by the time we finished. The completed piece was fine, but I still think it would have been more interesting to leave the Weiner come through. What a happy accident! You couldn't have planned it.

Hey John, if you read this, do you recall any other interesting details about the drawing? I still have the little LeWitt drawing on a postcard that was our honourarium for doing the gig. Later, Bellman paid us good dough to paint over the piece.