I had feared power tools until I got involved with The Mindshaft Society, a Burning Man theme camp that made bigger and bigger works of group art. My friends taught me how to use a jigsaw and I was liberated from the painter’s constraint of the square or rectangular canvas. I started shaping my painting surfaces. This one, which combines a green man and the eyes painted on Buddhist stupas across asia, was painted in acrylic on gessoed plywood. I coated it with polyurethane and it has survived five year on the exterior of my house. This is the center piece of a three-part painting. I took this picture before I hung the painting. It’s on the surface of our driveway. My paint-splattered clogs are visible, which, come to think of it, is ironic. The driveway used to be crappy looking asphalt that was ancient when we bought the house in 1986. One day I splattered-painted these clogs and didn’t use a dropcloth. I thought the stencil-looking outline of the splatter-painting looked artsy. Instead of getting angry at me, Judy put a brochure on the kitchen table — a company that replaced asphalt driveways with interlocking bricks. This caper cost me thousands of dollars. I never thought I’d enjoy spending thousands of dollars on a driveway, but it really turns the area between my house and office into an outdoor room.