The pole was worn for many reasons, one of which was to attract attention... we walked around a huge, 150-mile circumference circle as precisely as possible using existing roads, tracks and pathways - thus creating a gigantic but transient piece of sculpture. The pole was worn at all times whilst walking and each evening we did a short performance about the circular walk in a pub en route.

Adrian Henri, the Liverpool poet, painter and author of Environments and Happenings (19 74), was a member of the Arts Council panel which awarded the grant. He thought it was a small price to pay for three men working twenty-four hours a day to provide a week's entertainment. Henri was one of the few who praised the 'real movement sculpture' on the grounds that it was 'pure and beautiful'. David Archer, publican of the Ferry Inn, Reedham, disagreed: he described Ddart's ten minute act as 'an up and down thing without music' which left him and his 15 customers cold.

In 1975, Newman had already begun as a full-time teacher at the Corcoran School of Art. He was hired to paint a mural at the Construction site across from the Old Executive Office building, where he and twenty students created 35 - 40 magnified insects and animals and cut them out of plywood to place around the site. Since that project was a great success, Newman offered to create a painting for the inside of the building of a large nude. They accepted his proposal, so he began working. When he was finished, the painting was twenty four feet long. When the General Services Administration came to the Corcoran before it went up, they decided not to show the original piece. They refused to put the piece up, unless Newman painted a bathing suit over the woman in the mural.

"At the time I was just thinking, great, I'll paint a bathing suit on it, but that bathing suit is coming off as soon as it rains. I mixed tempera paint with that famous Corcoran bathroom soap, and I knew it would wash off right away. I told Paul Richard, the art writer at the Washington Post, about it, and he wrote a story titled "Praying for Rain." The painting came to be called Lady Sarah, named after its model."

During the first night it was up, rain fell. There was a line of about 300 people waiting to look through the peephole, in reaction to the article. Before the bathing suit could be completely washed off by the rain, the piece was taken down. Newman washed off the soap bathing suit and repainted it to become permanently present. He gave the piece to the Corcoran to raise money.

Newman did two more outdoor Sarahs: Sarah Claus, at a building site at 18th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue NW, and Sarah and Strawberry Shortcake, for the Third Edition restaurant in Georgetown. The first painting featured a wash-away Santa suit, but the dry snow that winter didn't do the job. So some Corcoran students in firefighter outfits, with Newman's blessing, hosed down the mural. The second work was approved and then contested by the federal Commission of Fine Arts.