-Blanket of Coins

I was hoping to have my newest work all photographed and planned to do sketch to finish breakdowns for a few. Since that hasn't happened yet, here is the best I can do with my point and shoot camera. This is a painting I did last summer. Starting off with a close up....


I've never been to Spain, but I named this painting after a river there.

"Guadiana" 30" x 30" oil on wood.
I was born in Altus, Oklahoma and moved to Arizona when I was 6 months old. There's that song "Never Been to Spain", a famous one that Elvis sang. Here's an excerpt:

Well I never been to Heaven
But I been to Oklahoma
Well they tell me I was born there
But I really don't remember
In Oklahoma, not Arizona
What does it matter
What does it matter

Thanks Patrick for pointing that out to me.


Detail sketch.

Detail of original sketch of girl.

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There's been a lot of talk about 'CHANGE' in the news...

A friend and I got to talking about how unfathomably massive a trillion is, so I decided to work it out and share.

Estimated U.S. $9 trillion(or British billion) deficit in currency coverage.

Summary of findings:
1) The US $9 trillion deficit broken down into quarters would blanket an area the size of New Jersey.
2) Broken down into pennies, it would blanket an area the size of Arizona, New Jersey, two Rhode Islands, and four Washington DC's combined and still have 14 square miles of pennies left over.
3) The deficit arranged into a solid-flat brick of stacked pennies would cover an area the size of Manhattan around 26 feet thick.
4) A tower of $9 trillion in pennies would make a stack all of the way to Saturn, or zig zag from the Sun and Earth almost 9 times.
5) Averaged out, America has added more than $106 million dollars each day to its deficit since 1776.
6) A calculation I found on the internet stated: A million dollars stack 500 feet (tall as the big pyramid in Egypt); a billion dollars stack 10 times higher than Mt. Everest; a 1 trillion dollars stack 1/4 of the way to the Moon 60,000 miles (97,200 Km)....
With that said, I guess 9 trillion, one dollar bills would stack (and no, not being placed end to end) would go up, arch around the moon and come back down to earth.

After doing all this math stuff, i came across a site called The MegaPenny Project, which is way more extensive and informative than my afternoon of time wasting. Cool images and other statistics to help visualize massive amounts of pennies.

Here's my math breakdown notes:
1 quarter = 1inch sq.(quarters seem to be 15/16th of an inch. whatev's.)
144 quarters = 1 ft sq.
if 43,560 ft sq = 1 acre.
then 43,560 x 144= 6,272,640 quarters per acre.
if 640 acres= 1 mile sq.
then 6,272,640 x 640 = 4,014,489,600 quarters per 1 mile sq.
if $9,000,000,000,000 x 4= 36,000,000,000,000 quarters
then 4,014,489,600 divided into 36 trillion= 8967 square miles of quarters butted next to each other.
New Jersey is 8,722 square miles.(according to what I found on the internet)

Using the same math in pennies.
1 penny= .75 inch sq.
256 pennies = 1 ft sq....
900 trillion pennies = 126,105 square miles.
Arizona = 114,006 square miles.
Rhode Island= 1545 square miles.
Washington D.C. = 68.25 square miles.
You could cover the area of Arizona in pennies, then cover all of New Jersey, then put a double stack covering RI, then a 4 stack on D.C. and still have 14 square miles of pennies left over.

17.5 pennies stacked = 1inch.
210 pennies =1ft.
126,105 divided by 22.96 ( square miles of Manhattan)= 5492.37 quarters per stack.
210 divided into 5492.37 = would cover the entire area of Manhattan with a brick of stacked pennies 26 feet thick.

5280 feet in a mile.
$11,088 of stacked pennies = 1 mile high.
divide 9 trillion by 11,088
$9 trillion = 811,688,311.68 miles of stacked pennies.
Though a planet's distance from each other vary, 800 million miles is about how far Saturn is from Earth, or the stack could go back and forth from the Sun to Earth, almost 9 times.

U.S. Declaration of Independence 1776.
1776 to 2007= 231 years.
365 days x 231 + 57 leap year days = 84372 days
$9 trillion divided by 84372 days = $106,670,459.39 per day of spending money we don't have since 1776.