Artist Uses Up To 20,000 Screws To Create Impressive Portraits, Absolutely Nails Them
Half painting, half sculpture, a study of balance, chaos, and harmony. These are Descent, artist Bruce Mackley’s stunning art pieces, industrial mosaics of over 20,000 decking and framing screws set meticulously into painted pine board at varying depths.
“This mixed media work can be tedious and challenging,” says Mackley, “but it offers a fantastic level of undoing and redoing.” He says that he spent hundreds of hours painstakingly working on the unique art, adjusting and readjusting screws to get the desired effect. Patience and focus are required for this kind of 3D art!
Weighing over 350lb and standing seven feet tall, the art installation is a challenge to transport. Mackley was forced to fabricate a special custom trolley just to move her. This is the second such piece he has created; the first was entered in a Midwestern art fair last year, where he found it appealed to new and unexpected demographics. “My favorite part of the whole thing was some of the couples where the guy was just tagging along, probably wishing he was out golfing instead. They’d walk up, discover what it was made from… then, bang… they could identify with the art. It really affected some guys in the trades. Super cool.”
Descent will be exhibited at The B.O.B. (an acronym for Big Old Building) in downtown Grand Rapids this fall during ArtPrize 9, if you want to check it out yourself. Touching the piece is encouraged for the blind, as a way of creating a mental ‘picture’, using the tactile senses.
What do you think about this cool art? Let us know in the comments below!
More info: Bruce Mackley | ArtPrize
33Kviews
Share on Facebook
Wow,nicely done.Too much money laundering modern art b******t out there.So this is very refreshing.
I get the pun, but screws and nails are two different things. One you hit with a hammer and the other you twist with a screwdriver or drill. They are also used for different things depending on what you are trying to accomplish.
Drop your oil paints. Go to the mosaic of nuts, crutches and cogs. Portrait of a nuts! In this age of steam and electricity! Great idea! Ilf and Petrov. The Golden Calf of 1927 in the USSR
This is sooo cool. I love the idea that it's half painting, half sculpture. I would never have thought of this. Regular paintings are too generic and it's always nice to see some true art. This deserves five gold stars!
I think this work is gorgeous. It's probably more impressive live. That said, I'm suspect of "hundreds" of hours. That means a minimum of 200 hrs. At 200, if it took 40 hours (an entire work week) to conceptualize and plan and buy supplies and plot out, that's still only about 2 screws per minute.
I'd imagine the artist probably has to readjust some of the screws multiple times.
Load More Replies... Wow,nicely done.Too much money laundering modern art b******t out there.So this is very refreshing.
I get the pun, but screws and nails are two different things. One you hit with a hammer and the other you twist with a screwdriver or drill. They are also used for different things depending on what you are trying to accomplish.
Drop your oil paints. Go to the mosaic of nuts, crutches and cogs. Portrait of a nuts! In this age of steam and electricity! Great idea! Ilf and Petrov. The Golden Calf of 1927 in the USSR
This is sooo cool. I love the idea that it's half painting, half sculpture. I would never have thought of this. Regular paintings are too generic and it's always nice to see some true art. This deserves five gold stars!
I think this work is gorgeous. It's probably more impressive live. That said, I'm suspect of "hundreds" of hours. That means a minimum of 200 hrs. At 200, if it took 40 hours (an entire work week) to conceptualize and plan and buy supplies and plot out, that's still only about 2 screws per minute.
I'd imagine the artist probably has to readjust some of the screws multiple times.
Load More Replies...
156
17