Spilling the Beans: Polaroid 50 | 50 | 50 Art Exhibition

If you know anything about me, you know that creating multi-disciplinary, socially enabled art AND getting unlikely people together into one community are really important tenets to my career and my life.

It’s with that in mind that I’m today spilling the beans to you about a project on which I’ve quietly been building for the past couple months in collaboration with my friends at Polaroid. It’s a group art show called 50 | 50 | 50, and the concept is simple, but–I think–very cool…

50+ Artists from a HUGE variety of disciplines…

given 50+ Polaroid printers…

to create 50+ pieces of work for a gallery show to be sold at auction for charity.

THE PROJECT.
The Made in Polaroid 50 | 50 | 50 Art Exhibition & Benefit Auction, is a group art show where 50+ select artists have come together to illuminate the creative possibilities when the same challenge–create art with a single device–is undertaken by range of artists from a variety of creative backgrounds. With no other limits. From single images, to multi-printed mosaics, to photographic sculptures, and hacked printers “performing” live, the project is as much about the creative process and a new era of creative spirit as much as it is about any resulting image or piece of art.

To highlight this, we’ve brought together an eclectic mix of some important & influential artists of our time–along with some select, emerging talent–from the disciplines of photography, filmmakers, graffiti & street art, painting, fashion design, performance artists, actors, and more. Names like:

_Mark Seliger (photographer – more than 125 covers for Rolling Stone)
_Philip-Lorca DiCorcia (photographer – credited with staged ‘fictional’ approach to creating photos – before him it was all journalism).
_James Franco (Actor, director, author, painter, & performer- star of Spider-Man trilogy)
_Hush (graffiti artist/toy designer)
_Eine (graffiti artist – partner in crime with legendary Banksy) i
_Marylin Minter (Painter – A Whitney Biennial artist along, SFMOMA and more)
_Rob Pruitt (late 80’s art legend as half of the art team Pruitt-Early)
_Gary Baseman (illustrator blurring the lines between toys & fine art)

and many many more…

…So it’s yours truly, plus the above list, plus more than 30 other art stars that I’ll continue to reveal, share and introduce over the next 2 weeks via my Twitter, Facebook, and Google+ feeds (using hashtag #505050). Some art world celebrities and some epic new names that your art-brain needs to know. We’re all getting together in the name of making on-demand art; we’re all using the same simple Polaroid GL10; and we’re all hoping to get your help in spreading awareness to raise as much money as possible for Free Arts NYC, the beneficiary of this project.

The show will be on display and open to the public at the legendary Phillips de Pury & Company gallery space at 450 15th Street, NYC from Wednesday Sept. 7th – Wednesday Sept 13th only, and will culminate in an artist reception and live benefit auction on that Wednesday the 14th at 450 Park Avenue. Details forthcoming. So in bullet points…

Who’s invited: YOU
Who’s on display: me & 49 other artists
What: Multi-disciplinary group art show
Where: Phillips de Pury & Company, NYC (450 WEST 15th Street)
When: September 7th – 13th
Why: make a statement on the role of imagery, artist constraints, and diversity in our culture. Oh and to raise a bunch of money for charity.

If you’re in/around NYC that week – please stop by. If you’re not, I’d be humbly grateful if you’d stay tuned-in and help us spread the world. I’ll be shouting out more info as this gets closer with the hope of introducing you and your community to some amazing creative talent.

WANT TO SEE WHAT I MADE FOR THE SHOW?
I’d be lying if I didn’t say I’m VERY pumped up with what I’ve created for this show. Wanted to share it with you here in a play by play. First the piece, then how I made it, complete with photos.

Dimensions: 68 inches x 81 inches
Materials: 300 image photographic mosaic printed using Polaroid GL10 on Zink Paper, mounted on museum board

Here’s how it was made….

First, we took a photograph of an anonymous “celebrity” model from my archives and, using Photoshop, reduced that huge image to 300 pixels.

Next, we took the color value of each one of those pixels and went out and physically shot original macro images of actual makeup that closely matched those color values, which we tweaked to perfectly match the correct color value.

Then, using a meticulous gridding process, we assigned those photos to a corresponding “pixel” in the mosaic, and printed each one of those pixels as it’s own unique print using the GL10 Instant Mobile Printer.

We then assembled the “pixels”, using acid free adhesive on museum matte board according to our printout to create the final image–approximately 6’ by 7’ finished piece.

Then we had that sucker crated and sent off to be framed and delivered to Phillips de Pury & Company. Very stoked.

[FWIW, this is a first in a large series of pieces that I’m creating in this vein. Much more discussion on this topic, and these types of pieces, in the future.]

For now, thanks for indulging me. Hope you dig it. If you have any questions about my process, I’m happy to answer them below. The piece is called Celebrity #1, so you can surmise your own meaning behind it for now. In the meantime, you can be assured that there are several other mind blowing pieces from my contemporaries in this show. I’ll be proud to be hanging next to them in the exhibition and at benefit auction on September 14th. I hope you’ll help spread the word about the show–perhaps even come see it in NYC in a couple weeks.

Check out the Polaroid Tumblr to see the final pieces from my fellow artists as they are announced and check out Polaroid.com/505050 for more details.

#MadRespect to you and yours.