Five
Printed by Imagine Media
Printed in New Mexico
Printed by Imagine Media
Printed in New Mexico
Seeing is Believing
By Ross Burns
If patience is a virtue, then artist Phil Hansen should be canonized.
Hansen creates massive pieces from unexpected materials and by unusual
and exhausting methods. His pieces take months to plan and he spends
countless hours creating them. For "A Moment," Hansen published his
cell phone number on the Internet and asked people to call and tell him
about something that changed their lives. He fielded 600 phone calls and
used parts of the stories he heard to create a picture on a 10-foot
diameter revolving disc he built. While creating the piece, which is
like pointillism with words, he didn't leave his garage for six days. He
used dandelions to recreate Mother Teresa. The names of the 1,768
coalition soldiers killed in Iraq between the start of the war and April
30th, 2005 render a picture of President Bush that's nearly eight feet
tall. He painstakingly arranged 6,000 bandages to create a canvas for a
44" by 104" portrait of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il painted with
half a liter of his own blood.
The process is as spectacular as the product, and Hansen records it all.
He then puts the sped-up and edited versions on Internet video sites
and his own website, the latter of which has been translated into 12
foreign languages by his fans.
Watching someone paint a bucolic landscape is about as exciting as,
well, watching paint dry. But watching Hansen pain Bruce Lee by Kung Fu
chopping a 14-foot wide canvas with his paint-dipped hand is riveting.
"The videotaping is about reaching an audience that normally would
never look at art. The YouTube audience is young and made up of people
who may not go to galleries," says Hansen. Read some of the thousands of
viewer comments posted on YouTube or Yahoo! Video and you'll see he's
successfully connecting with them. "This is art even a layman like me
can enjoy," "Dude you're so talented," and "OMG (oh my God), that was so
cool!" are typical examples.
His approach to art has always been different. He went to art school
for a quarter and dropped out. He took a break from art a few years,
and then, ironically, when he returned to it, his skills had improved.
His early background in pointillism led him to start fragmenting images,
and boredom inspired him to use odd mediums. "I just couldn't handle
doing the same thing over and over again," says Hansen.
Hansen isn't interested in simply creating pop art, but he isn't trying
to ensconce himself in the art world either. "I want to deal with
subject matter people can relate to. I was turned off by the art world.
It always seemed like it was artists making art for artists, for people
viewing it a lot and not to the general public." Hansen seeks that
delicate balance of getting people interested in art and conveying greater
ideas.
It doesn't take an artistic genius to make good use of negative space
or to master shading. Hansen, too, has superb illustration and
rendering skills, but what makes him extraordinary is how he uses them
and with what. There are thousands of paintings of the Virgin Mary.
There are also numerous and dubious reports of people seeing her image in
a potato chip or road sign. Hansen combined the two and created a
beautiful image of her with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. For "48
Women," a memorial to the victims of the Green River Killer, he used
11,792 hand-cut, pointillized portraits of the victims to create the
image of mass-murderer Gary Ridgeway in remarkable detail. It took him
five months to do what he could have done with a brush in just a few days.
The work takes its toll on Hansen in a number of ways. For one
project, he painted 30 portraits on his torso, one on top of the other.
The entire thing took him 30 hours, 20 of which were spent standing in
front of a camera while painting upside down. He tried to sleep, but with
the layers of paint on his torso, it was nearly impossible.
The physical challenges of drawing half a liter of blood for the Kim
Jong il portrait are obvious, but the piece was particularly challenging
emotionally. "I've never been more depressed, excited and angry in my
life than when I was working on that piece," says Hansen. "I had one
shot. Once the blood went on, there was absolutely no changing things."
There are financial costs, too. Hansen spent $1,300 on supplies for
the revolving disc, and all those bandages and jars of peanut butter
aren't free. He's had some success selling his work, but his belief that
art should be for everyone can be a handicap. He sells digital prints
of his projects, but he doesn't limit their number. Potential customers
have told him they would buy his art if he made a limited amount of
prints, but he hasn't softened his stance. He wants his art to always be
available to everyone.
A full-time job as an x-ray technician helps support his artistic
career and he has had commissions. Kentucky Fried Chicken paid him to do
a Colonel Sanders what he did for Bruce Lee. But instead of the black
paint he used for Lee, KFC had him do it with teriyaki sauce - at least
that's what the video leads us to believe. He can also play it straight
and draw exquisite commissioned portraits with nothing more than pencil
and paper.
Like anyone, Hansen would like to be able to leave his day job. But he
seems devoted to art for art's sake. Each week he produces and
destroys, or lets nature destroy, what he calls "Goodbye Art." Colored
match tips were arranged to create the image of Jimi Hendrix, and then set
alight. He makes chalk sidewalk drawings around his adopted home of
Minneapolis. He's used pine cones, leaves, candles and x-rays for other
pieces that last no more than a few hours, or, in the case of Jimi
Hendrix, a few seconds.
Vanishing art. Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Kung Fu chops.
Bandages and blood. It may sound strange - and it is. But the final
results belie the usual methods and unorthodox media. Seeing is
believing.
By Ross Burns
If patience is a virtue, then artist Phil Hansen should be canonized.
Hansen creates massive pieces from unexpected materials and by unusual
and exhausting methods. His pieces take months to plan and he spends
countless hours creating them. For "A Moment," Hansen published his
cell phone number on the Internet and asked people to call and tell him
about something that changed their lives. He fielded 600 phone calls and
used parts of the stories he heard to create a picture on a 10-foot
diameter revolving disc he built. While creating the piece, which is
like pointillism with words, he didn't leave his garage for six days. He
used dandelions to recreate Mother Teresa. The names of the 1,768
coalition soldiers killed in Iraq between the start of the war and April
30th, 2005 render a picture of President Bush that's nearly eight feet
tall. He painstakingly arranged 6,000 bandages to create a canvas for a
44" by 104" portrait of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il painted with
half a liter of his own blood.
The process is as spectacular as the product, and Hansen records it all.
He then puts the sped-up and edited versions on Internet video sites
and his own website, the latter of which has been translated into 12
foreign languages by his fans.
Watching someone paint a bucolic landscape is about as exciting as,
well, watching paint dry. But watching Hansen pain Bruce Lee by Kung Fu
chopping a 14-foot wide canvas with his paint-dipped hand is riveting.
"The videotaping is about reaching an audience that normally would
never look at art. The YouTube audience is young and made up of people
who may not go to galleries," says Hansen. Read some of the thousands of
viewer comments posted on YouTube or Yahoo! Video and you'll see he's
successfully connecting with them. "This is art even a layman like me
can enjoy," "Dude you're so talented," and "OMG (oh my God), that was so
cool!" are typical examples.
His approach to art has always been different. He went to art school
for a quarter and dropped out. He took a break from art a few years,
and then, ironically, when he returned to it, his skills had improved.
His early background in pointillism led him to start fragmenting images,
and boredom inspired him to use odd mediums. "I just couldn't handle
doing the same thing over and over again," says Hansen.
Hansen isn't interested in simply creating pop art, but he isn't trying
to ensconce himself in the art world either. "I want to deal with
subject matter people can relate to. I was turned off by the art world.
It always seemed like it was artists making art for artists, for people
viewing it a lot and not to the general public." Hansen seeks that
delicate balance of getting people interested in art and conveying greater
ideas.
It doesn't take an artistic genius to make good use of negative space
or to master shading. Hansen, too, has superb illustration and
rendering skills, but what makes him extraordinary is how he uses them
and with what. There are thousands of paintings of the Virgin Mary.
There are also numerous and dubious reports of people seeing her image in
a potato chip or road sign. Hansen combined the two and created a
beautiful image of her with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. For "48
Women," a memorial to the victims of the Green River Killer, he used
11,792 hand-cut, pointillized portraits of the victims to create the
image of mass-murderer Gary Ridgeway in remarkable detail. It took him
five months to do what he could have done with a brush in just a few days.
The work takes its toll on Hansen in a number of ways. For one
project, he painted 30 portraits on his torso, one on top of the other.
The entire thing took him 30 hours, 20 of which were spent standing in
front of a camera while painting upside down. He tried to sleep, but with
the layers of paint on his torso, it was nearly impossible.
The physical challenges of drawing half a liter of blood for the Kim
Jong il portrait are obvious, but the piece was particularly challenging
emotionally. "I've never been more depressed, excited and angry in my
life than when I was working on that piece," says Hansen. "I had one
shot. Once the blood went on, there was absolutely no changing things."
There are financial costs, too. Hansen spent $1,300 on supplies for
the revolving disc, and all those bandages and jars of peanut butter
aren't free. He's had some success selling his work, but his belief that
art should be for everyone can be a handicap. He sells digital prints
of his projects, but he doesn't limit their number. Potential customers
have told him they would buy his art if he made a limited amount of
prints, but he hasn't softened his stance. He wants his art to always be
available to everyone.
A full-time job as an x-ray technician helps support his artistic
career and he has had commissions. Kentucky Fried Chicken paid him to do
a Colonel Sanders what he did for Bruce Lee. But instead of the black
paint he used for Lee, KFC had him do it with teriyaki sauce - at least
that's what the video leads us to believe. He can also play it straight
and draw exquisite commissioned portraits with nothing more than pencil
and paper.
Like anyone, Hansen would like to be able to leave his day job. But he
seems devoted to art for art's sake. Each week he produces and
destroys, or lets nature destroy, what he calls "Goodbye Art." Colored
match tips were arranged to create the image of Jimi Hendrix, and then set
alight. He makes chalk sidewalk drawings around his adopted home of
Minneapolis. He's used pine cones, leaves, candles and x-rays for other
pieces that last no more than a few hours, or, in the case of Jimi
Hendrix, a few seconds.
Vanishing art. Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Kung Fu chops.
Bandages and blood. It may sound strange - and it is. But the final
results belie the usual methods and unorthodox media. Seeing is
believing.
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