Sixty rained-on people stand in a square, forming the walls of a
makeshift art gallery. The art hangs around their necks. We squeeze
unceremoniously between two of them. “I’m so glad you’re not
hurt!” Jed Dunkerley yells, rushing toward us. “You came right
through that wall!” He points to the “door,” an opening in one corner,
which we hadn’t noticed. Greg Lundgren, fingering a white envelope
fat with a stack of cash ($500, all in fives), welcomes us dryly: “Some
people aren’t used to this kind of gallery.”
Before the night was out, Dunkerley would spin a four-foot white
arrow mounted on a lazy Susan in the center of the square. It would
point to a fellow named Benny Phanichkul, wearing gray galoshes and a
thrift-store paint-by-numbers of two cowboys (one black, one
white) in an idyll, and he would get the money—he would win
the Arbitrary Art Grant in Art Dealing. Would he spend it on any of the
art being dealt right here in this Capitol Hill gravel parking lot?
“No, I’m gonna spend it on my own art,” he said. “I’m a percussionist,
but I work as a software tester, which I hate. The only thing I
have to live for is my creative outlets.” Benny, that sounds terrible!
“It is terrible,” he said.
This is exactly why Lundgren gives out Arbitrary Art Grants: to get
art made without the usual judgment that only “good” art deserves
funding. All summer, he has been handing out similar randomly earned
cash prizes in dance, writing, graphic design, and sculpture. Past
entries from all such contests will be exhibited in a giant mass at Bumbershoot, with winners selected on the spot in three new
categories: photography, fashion, and architecture.
The walls were thick with dealers in the parking lot. It was not
immediately clear whether the arrow pointed to Phanichkul or to the
freckled man squeezed up next to him, who wore a driftwood boa,
short shorts, and a framed, gray-toned grid drawing. His name was
Michael William. “I’m AWOL, so I dropped my last name,” he said with
cheer. “I actually made this around the time I went AWOL. It’s my take
on the American flag.”
Four-year-old twins each sported a drawing of a monster. Recognized
artists like Ben Beres and Toshi Asai let cupcake crumbs and raindrops
fall on their paintings. Recent art-school grads rubbed literal elbows
with a busker, a guy working on his Globetrotter spin, a latch-hooker
with a Pomeranian, and an entire family strapping on paintings from the
Official Bad Art Museum of Art. At least one sale was made, by Jenny
Zwick, of a print from the series What Might Go Wrong, for $10.
It read, “Forget how to breathe.” 
just so others who bought from the series know – that print was an imperfect “test print” and NOT of the same standard as the sold out 3-edition run of that same plate.