SFX: guitar twang — the sounds of driving on the highway; cars rushing by 

ED RUSCHA:  

In the early sixties, I would drive between Oklahoma and California. And I loved being on the road and the kind of lost in thought idea that — that hits you when you travel along the road and see signs. Signs have always been an important thing to me, and they begin showing up in my work.  

NARRATOR:  

After a few of those cross-country road trips, Ed Ruscha settled into a job at a printing press in Los Angeles. 

SFX: the sounds of a typesetter’s studio — the clatter of letter plates and the whir of the press. 

RUSCHA:  

Setting type and working with typography, I began to see these things as pictures. I liked monosyllabic words that had a certain power to them.  

And then the world of painting came into this thing, and — bang — they started melding together, and I could see that I should paint a picture of that word, rather than print it on paper. 

NARRATOR:  

Put yourself back on that highway …  

RUSCHA echo:

You travel along the road and see signs  

NARRATOR:  

And imagine this word on a sign coming towards you. 

SFX: highway sounds and music return. 

NARRATOR: 

As the sign blurs past, can you see the letters just as shapes, separate from the word? Tricky, isn’t it? 

SFX: music out.