This assemblage sculpture is part of my "MECHANICAL CHRIST" series and is 36" x 25" x 21" , with 2 halogen, plug in lights and 4 LED multicolor light pads. This was a very laborious and fun sculpture to create. I am proud to say that this sculpture part of academy award winner movie director Guillermo Del Torro’s art collection. I met Guillermo at Monsterpalooza back in 2011. He came up to my table and told me how much he loved my assemblage sculptures. I was almost speechless. He wanted to buy Technological Crucifixion assemblage sculpture but 52” x 48” x 15” was too large for the space he had. So I told him that I was working on one and would let him know when it was finished. This piece was already in the works. I was trying to finish it for the first Conjoined show at the Copro Gallery but it wasn’t quite ready yet. Uppon completion finish about 4-6 months later, I emailed him. He loved it. The piece was scheduled to be in my first solo show at the “Forgotten Saints Gallery” on Melrose Ave in Los Angeles June 2011. It was a very fun show but Guillermo did not purchase the piece it until it was in the Conjoined II show that following January of 2012. I remember laughing when gallery director Gary Pressman told me he purchased it. Gary asked, why are you laughing. I told him that I tried to sell it to him in June at a different gallery.
The following is some of what went into making this piece.
I remember someone asking me at the Copro gallery where I found the fat man figure for the sculpture. I told him in Supersculpy clay and aluminum foil. After coating it with elmers glue, the armature ready to start getting some clay. I looked at loads of fat reference. I wanted his face to resemble the Pope at the time, just a little. This was a great time I remember my son Lucian hanging out in the garage with me sculpting on a little skull armature I made him to play with.
Bellow, is my working sketch I did on an airplane flight 848 from Chicago to San Diego after a Halloween Tradeshow trip. Here I was trying to work out the basic structure and how I was going to imply “Fast Food Chains” without being blatant about it.
The birch base of the sculpture. It originally was going to have a video screen with a magnifying lens over it but I ditched this idea.
The sculpt of the hungry mouths sculpt. The bottom teeth here are actually an impression cast of my own teeth.
Some parts for detailing!
The baby heads at the top are from a doll mask I sculpted in 1998 for Disguise Inc. Spencers still buys them every year for their pop up Spirit Halloween Stores. Eventually the cheap plastic vacuum form masks that came from my sculpture ended up in Stranger Things Season 2!
Lots of pipes! Only a few trips to the plumbing section at Home Depot…
To do a sculpture like this I needed to be very organized with a the parts I’ve collected over the years. The draw shelves were extremely important for this project and countless others.
The main tubing armature is finished, preliminary lights, resin castings of the figure, the hungry mouths and the custom tooth sculpt are in place. From here is the icing on the cake, detailing!
After detail I masked of certain areas for painting above.
Nearly finished at this point. All it needed here was some ageing and weathering paint.