LittIe Dripper

Even by Eastern prep-school standards, Deerfield Academy in Deerfield, Mass. tends to be conservative; its informal art classes tend to be the same. But one day last month, Freshman Renny Drew, 14, decided to try something different. The art teacher had told the boys to go right ahead and paint whatever they wished. Renny's inspiration led him to develop this technique:

First he pulls the cardboard out of a shirt that has just come back from the laundry. Then he smears it over with a neutral color. After that he holds a brush above it and lets some house paint drip. Finally, he sprinkles the whole affair with gold or silver powder. The result: a series of Jackson Pollock-like abstractions, about as modern as modern can be. Renny's matter-of-fact name for them: "drip paintings."

Renny's classmates seemed to like his work, started buying up his cardboards for 25-c- apiece. But, more important, his teacher liked them too ("nice design . . . balanced lines . . ."), and decided to take some of them to Boston. There Gallery-Owner Margaret Brown saw them and was enthralled--"terrific spatial feeling . . . great sensitivity . . ." She put them on display along with her exhibit of Calder mobiles. "It takes an artist with some feeling," said she, "to do 20 of these and sustain his values." Some of her advance-guard customers agreed. By last week, she had sold six original Drews for $2 to $4 each, and customers were clamoring for more.

Was Renny Drew, then, really a future Jackson Pollock? His results were certainly somewhat similar (see cut), and so was his technique. But last week Renny himself pointed the moral to his story: "Anybody can do it."

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