NARRATOR: 

This painting is called 60 Watts. It’s part of Ed Ruscha’s silhouette series. 

ED RUSCHA:  

I wanted something smoky and sort of, you know, difficult to see … I wanted there to be a little bit of a struggle there or something And I found myself using an airbrush, an air gun to make these things.  

SFX: A film projector starts up …  

RUSCHA:  

Those silhouette shadowy paintings are filmic like. And reminded me of how movies are, with their scratches and their little blips and all that… 

SFX: the projector is running, countdown blips of a film leader… 

NARRATOR:  

How about this scene… 

A house in the woods, a light in the window… it looks like someone is home. 

SFX: cheerful and comforting music. The sounds of muffled laughter, children inside the house, crackles and pops of a fireplace. 

NARRATOR:  

But why is there just one window lit up in that whole house? 

SFX: The music shifts to something creepy, footsteps, like someone is in the house with them. We hear the creak of a door opening. 

NARRATOR:  

…and anything could be hiding in those woods… 

SFX: Super-creepy soundbed of evil lurking in the woods. We hear the howl of a wolf.  

NARRATOR:  

The thing about all that shadow, there isn’t much visual information. This painting leaves a lot of space to fill in the blanks. 

SFX: sound of film projector slowly fades.