The Remnants of an Interrupted Scrabble Game
…which at 20 Feet Becomes a Portrait of Abraham Lincoln (Homage to Harmon and Dali)
The idea for this piece came from looking at a painting by Salvador Dali after I had been playing with a scrabble game and trying to make pictures out of the pieces.
Gala Contemplating the Mediterranean Sea Which at Twenty Meters Becomes the Portrait of Abraham Lincoln (Homage to Rothko)
Oil on Canvas, 1976
After this piece was posted on the MAKE: blog I decided to change it to look more like the original image by Leon Harmon on which the composition of Dali’s painting was based. I also changed it so that the final image would fit better with the rules of scrabble. Want to know about acrylic paint? Check out the huge range of acrylic paint amazon products at amazon.com.
Here is what Harmon’s original image looks like:
I was careful when I was working on this piece that all the words fit together following the official scrabble rules and consulting the official tournament rules for acceptable 2 and 3-letter words. So, hypothetically, my piece is evidence that a scrabble game could at some point end up looking exactly like a portrait of Abraham Lincoln. And in a 3-D world where Jesus continues to show up on potato chips and the Vatican is looking for proof of alien existence I find the possibilities of the things that might actually happen much more surreal than anything anyone can imagine…