What does a sign do when you take the words and images away?  The billboards presented here are emptied of information:  the ad campaign ended, these spaces are now available, waiting for a new tenant, a new set of messages.  Unrented, they are momentarily mute, emptied of the instrumental languages of words and images that try to modify our behavior.  With that information gone, you see these billboards as things:  metal support structures (some new, some rusted),  raw plywood, plywood primed white, plywood primed “high visibility” yellow.  As objects, they exist somewhere between paintings and sculpture.  They are elaborate physical supports for a field of color —  in most cases white, but at times the close tones of unpainted plywood. 

When I drive the Long Island Expressway, I move through a field of information.  The signs transmit their messages.  I think I can ignore them, but I soak them up and they are part of the trip.  The unrented billboards are different.  They are visual dial tones.  The circuit is open and ready, but there is no transmission yet, no attempt to manipulate my consciousness.  These drawings were made from my observations of billboards mainly in the Eastern United States.   I see these billboards at high speed from my car, and often all I can manage is a glimpse.  These drawings, then, are made from those remembered observations.  Some of these were “unrented” by me.  The billboards in question currently carry ads.  With my drawings, I removed the ads so I could focus on what would remain:  the physical aspects of the sign as a thing. These drawings are pictures of picturelessness. 

This work grows out of slack moments in the commercial enterprise.  An unrented billboard is an unassigned space.  It is not currently doing anything for anyone.  There is no client.  It is a moment of inefficiency, it communicates a message of no message, or a message of availability to all messages.