This morning, I heard that our infamous Spaghetti Junction in Dekalb County had received the dubious honor of being the most dangerous intersection in the United States for the third year in a row. I thought it was time to dust off an older painting and write about it.
I threw this painting in the trash three times. The last time I retrieved it, I submitted it to an exhibition in Nebraska and was stunned when it was accepted. Several weeks later, the curator of the exhibit contacted me, saying that “Freeway” had been a great hit at the show. (I didn’t tell him I had thrown it away three times.)
The original title was “Spaghetti Junction” – our slang for this crazy intersection of I-85 and I-285. When it was accepted for the exhibition, I changed the title to “Freeway” so Midwesterners would understand what the images represented. It is acrylic on canvas and was painted with palette knives, brushes and … a credit card. (Appropriate use of a credit card, don’t you think?)