6/18/2008

Nail Painting

It's not a great photo, but: the nails are stuck by their heads to the surface with polyester resin, pointing at the viewer (those diagonal lines are shadows).  The color is spattered spray paint.  It was 36 by 48 inches, and so poorly built (by me) that it fell apart after a few years.

I'm shocked I'm still alive after all the stuff I inhaled making this and a few other things with resin and spray paint.  One big battleship-gray nail sculpture was too ugly to be photographed, like giant, hairy wings.

I had a thing for painted sculpture then, lost in between the surface and volume of things.  For another piece, I stuffed some of my old clothes with newspaper, then covered it in layers of resin until it stood up -- shoes to shirt -- and looked just like me, minus the biological part.  I got more than halfway done hand-painting the surface with tiny dots and patterns when I stopped, wondering why I was decorating the thing, distracting from its form.