In 1978 I was setting about to make some valentines for my mother and sisters. My drawing skills have always been poor and a number of my attempts were woefully inadequate. I decided to cut out a heart shape from poster board, put it under the paper and rub the margin, much like we all did with coins as children, to bring up the image. Then I started cutting out other shapes and patterns. Soon I was noticing that there were textures everywhere and started rubbing whatever looked interesting and applicable.

I do not recall if I ever finished the valentines' that year but I continued to explore the drawing technique involved with rubbing surfaces. A few years later my friend Arlyn Ende called me and said "I discovered the word that describes what you do, it's called frottage!"

During that first week of exploring frottage I made the above drawing. The concentric circles are made from cut and glued cardboard,floor linoleum, shotgun shell ends and flattened out sides, a protractor, car speaker cover, and the word handmade from a Puma Knife case. Needless to say that winter I was trying all kinds of textures, patterns and shapes. I found that graphite sticks worked well as pencil point did not cover enough surface and poked through the paper. Consequently my studio is filled with objects. From garbage bag closures to a bulldozer head gasket. I was walking down a side walk once and spied a nice texture from a broken piece from a car grill. On a second look I realized I already had that.

What follows are a few of the pieces that came from pursuing and developing the technique.

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