By John A. Barry And Bill Carmel
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About this blog: John Barry is the creator of trAction Painting, a process/performance genre in which he applies paint to large surfaces with bicycles, roller skates, and other wheeled conveyances. With Bill Carmel and other associates, he has bro...
(More)About this blog: John Barry is the creator of trAction Painting, a process/performance genre in which he applies paint to large surfaces with bicycles, roller skates, and other wheeled conveyances. With Bill Carmel and other associates, he has brought trAction Painting events to local schools and summer camps. He also creates visual puns. His works are included in several private collections. John has authored/coauthored a dozen books, including Technobabble and Sunburst: The Ascent of Sun Microsystems. John can be contacted at jobarry33@comcast.net or 925-918-7882.
Bill Carmel has 35 years' experience as a professional artist. His fine art paintings, sculptures, and designs are included in private, corporate, and public art collections in the United States, Europe, and Australia. After teaching at Humboldt State University and Southern Illinois University, he returned to the Bay Area, where he remains active in the arts by serving as a co-curator for the Lamorinda Arts Council's Orinda Gallery and by exhibiting throughout the Bay Area. Bill reviews exhibits at SFMOMA, the De Young and Palace of Fine Arts museums, and other Bay Area exhibition venues. Bill can be contacted at billcarmel3@yahoo.com.
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I (John) paint with bikes, scooters, skates, and other wheeled conveyances. I count Jackson Pollock as a primary influence. Pollock was the avatar of Action Painting, a name I incorporated into my paint application creation: trAction Painting.
But only recently did I realize an unknown debt to Robert Rauschenberg and John Cage. The exhibition “Robert Rauschenberg: Erasing the Rules” runs at SFMOMA until March 28. Rauschenberg was a master of eclecticism, working in almost every genre and medium. With Cage, in 1953, he collaborated on a piece that had the two taping 20 pieces of paper together, to form a paper trail that was about 30 feet long. They laid it out on a street, and Rauschenberg poured a pool of black paint next to one end of the paper trail. Cage drove this Ford Model A through the paint and across the paper; the result was “Automobile Tire Print.”
As the explanation of the work puts it: “The finished piece has been interpreted as a print, a drawing, and a performance, as well as an early example of Rauschenberg’s interest in alternative forms of markmaking and his irreverence toward artists who glorified the brushstroke.”
