Two artistic friends and I decided to do a work of artistic vandalism on the big, blank, brick wall of an insurance office building. We each began with the outline of our own body and filled this in with our personal design. Then we made complete sets of stencils with which to apply the designs to the wall with maximum speed.

We crept there at 4 a.m. one night with our stencils and spray paint. There was plenty of spontaneity: stencil positions a bit off, tape not sticking, paper tangled, paint dripping, hands covered with paint, stencils frantically torn off the wall before they were supposed to be. All the while several dogs barked at us, while our minds careened into a state of frenzied panic.

One friend messed up his stencils in the middle of it and so couldn't finish his figure. Another forgot the internal paint for one leg. I finished an arm in the wrong color. Before we could finish, a harmless little economy car putted by, causing us to flee for our lives. (I returned a week later to finish my figure.)

We figured the wall would look like an ugly mess, but the next day we saw it really didn't come over that badly. No masterpiece, but the main intent was conveyed.

One day about three months after doing the wall, we found our work gone - the wall had been whitewashed.