Phillipe Petite’s feat made it into The “Guinness “World Record Holders” book. I had a paperback copy of the book and made a series of paintings based on the book. Done very quickly I used house paint on the back of big billboard sheets that I used to get from Dave Mahoney‘s father. The paintings were shown in 1989 at the cavernous Pyramid Arts Center in Village Gate. John Worden was the director and Kathy Russo the assistant. She brought Spaulding Gray up here and left town with him. They spent the rest of his life together. It is so easy to digress.
Phillipe Petite will celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of this feat in a performance in Manhattan this week. If you haven’t seen the 1984, Academy Award-winning documentary, “Man on Wire” now would be a good time to track that down.
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