Hotel Art Intervention Project A few years ago I told you about my "hotel art intervention project" where, starting in the late 70's and through the early 2000's, it was my usual practice, as sort of a personal artistic jihad, to take down the framed "art" in hotel rooms, take the frame apart, and remove the usual poster or reproduction that was the art, turn it around, and draw (and once in a while actually paint) a "new" original work on the verso of the poster. It was usually a simple, figurative line drawing, more often than not done while watching TV, and often inspired by the TV show itself. Some were more elaborate than others, and every once in a while a really involved drawing would emerge. Once finished, I would re-frame the new work, and re-hang it on the wall. Sometimes I would add touches to an existing piece. I especially loved those mass produced oil paintings of beaches and huts and glorious sunsets. To the beaches I would "add" other elements, such as footprints spelling out messages, discarded syringes, a dead octopus, etc. To the glorious sunsets perhaps an UFO or the odd-looking airplane, or even Superman flying around. Between the late 1970s and up to maybe 2002-3 I did this probably around 200 times in hotel rooms in Europe, Canada, Mexico and all over the United States. A few weeks ago I visited the Left Coast and stayed in a hotel that I had previously been in many times. It has been refurbished recently and all the rooms were nice and clean. My room was decorated with some acceptable "wall decor" of flower prints (see the images below). And then, to my utter surprise I discovered a piece of artwork hanging in this room which was one of the works that I had "improved" upon a few years ago! I recognized it instantly!

Here's the "improved" print hanging on the hotel room wall today What are the chances that from all the rooms in that hotel I would end up in the one where my intervention was hanging? Or better put re-hung. Here's another shot of the piece in the corner of the room I documented most of the earlier hotel work via slides (remember slides?) - the vast majority of which were lost in the mid 90s when the storage facility where I had a lot of books, tons of art slides and other stuff was flooded. But this latter "intervention" documentation survives thanks to digital cameras, as it is one of the later ones, from around 2002. So I went back through a couple of old PCs that I need to throw away as soon as I copy everything that's in the C drive, and found some vintage digital images of the original process. This is the original flower poster, image taken in 2002 before I "improved" the wall decor What I did in this particular case, was to create a furious battle scene going on the flower itself. From a distance it looks like the flower is being invaded by bugs, but once we get close, we see a barbaric battle going on, as Cimmerians attack the flower, being defended well by armed guards. What movie was I watching at the time in that hotel room in 2002? A TV re-run of Conan The Barbarian! Here's the piece back in 2002, unframed on my hotel bed and ready to be improved Here's a close up of the "improved" flower poster Here's a close up of one of the bulbs showing the furious action going on Then, I re-discovered that in this particular instance I had done a second drawing on the back of the frame. I used the nice masonite backing to do a quick charcoal and conte drawing: two for the price of one! Here's the "extra" piece of art done on the back of the frame I never did check when I was in the room to see if that drawing is still on the back of the frame. It is probably impossible to do so anyway, as the wall decor in most hotels these days are anchored to the wall in such a way that it takes a concentrated effort to get them off the wall (as if anyone would steal it?). Here's a close up of the drawing on the back of the frame I'm not saying anything, but I feel the jihad rekindling!

  And here's the room, in case you ever happen to be out West

These days I am doing a similar, but modified project - which I will call my "art deployment" project, where I get and use frames from area thrift shops, remove the cheap reproductions (usually) that are in these frames, replace them with my own artwork -- usually art school era vintage "real" prints such as etchings, linocuts, lithos, etc. and even some original work -- and then "sneak" it back into the thrift shop for some lucky and sharp-eyed person to acquire and "boom" a Campello gets into another collection.