Donato's drips

 

Mark Bonokoski runs into our back hallway fishbowl at the Sun, waving a few scraps of paper.

"Want to own an Andy Donato original?" he grins. I take a scrap and see a tiny version of the six-foot-wide image you see above.

It looks like brown clouds coming over the mountains on Mars. That white at the bottom? A frozen lake.

Or is it upside-down?

Andy--the acclaimed artist and cartoonist--paints abstracts? Who knew?

I look at another tablet-sized inky bit of paper--the original to the five-foot-high piece you see below.

"What is this?" I ask.

Bono explains this is the result of Donato cleaning his brushes.

This is the waste paper Andy wipes them on.

He's scooped a few from his trash.

It turns out Donato has a Plexiglas place that will turn these derelict brush wipers into giant-sized art pieces.

I sign up for two.

This second one is nearly five feet high.

 

I suspect few people own these Donato "originals".

 

Each giant copy was made to order.

You got the scrap of brush-wipe and the blow up.

This was in the 1980s.

 

We paid hundreds to be in on a very elfin joke about art.

 

In an age when Warhol's soup cans and Pollack's splatters were going for millions,

couldn't Andy's brush-cleaners command a market?

 

In this case, they did.

 

I thought about that recently, as objects without value are offered as one-of-a-kinds on the web.

 

I love Donato's wipes.

 

Art is everything.

And sometimes nothing.

 

You can think about it a lot.

Or not at all.

If there's found art, there can be found trash.

 

Donato is one smart guy.

_

--VeronicaHenry/QMI

 

 

Right side-up?