Naturally, the term "lounge lizard" appealed to me. I imagined a bar loaded with fine beverages and a large free buffet inhabited by partying dinosaurs who never leave.

When you as an artist become accepted as doing a certain imagery, the public demands, no, screams that you continue doing that imagery. You'd think that people who already have frogs somehow have gotten the idea that if you don't do frogs any more then their frogs are somehow devalued.

Initially, I made the Sam Francis pieces to remind him that I had made some pieces for him and that he hadn't as yet paid me with pieces of his own. But I got very much involved in how to duplicate a splat of paint in plexi and the primary-ness of his color.

I've made a lot palm trees out of plexiglas. Like fire, they look great in the colored plastic but are ridiculously difficult to make.

It is always pleasant to find a great pun to use that includes your favorite art material.

To make matters worse, Sam then donated two of the three works I made for him to The Oakland Museum. He still hadn't made the pieces he owed me. I stepped up the reminders.

My four favorite "fruit terrorist" puns, Hot Potato, The Yellow Peril, The Grapes of Wrath, and Agent Orange.

Regardless of what people now think of these pieces, post 9/11, they were all about the insurance industry.

I even sent him a squashed dried frog with a black spot painted on it. I released secret information about his life to the columnist Herb Caen of the San Francisco Chronicle. But to no avail.

Still, not really having anything to do with 9/11, I did a set of pieces that made the building seem like a living thing concerned with the health and well being of its population.

A proposal to any municipality who would care to make their public art more colorful.

One of a series of painted plastic pieces that include a PhotoShopped portrait of the artist, Jackson Pollock.