Andrew Myers and Michael Mapes Dismantling Art

Andrew Myers, must have incredible patience. Working from Laguna Beach, this California-based artist goes through a detailed process to create his unusual masterpieces.

Starting with a base, plywood panel, he then places pages of a phone book on top. (using pages from his subjects’ local area.) He then draws out a face and pre-drills 8,000 to 10,000 holes, by hand. He gauges the piece as he goes along and doesn’t reply on any computer software to guide his hand. “For me, I consider this a traditional sculpture and all my screws are at different depths,” he says. One of the most challenging parts is getting rid of the flat drawing underneath because he then has to paint over each of the screw heads, individually, so that in the end, the sculpture looks like an actual portrait.

Many thanks to Alice over at My Modern Met for this insight into Andrew’s work processes. She asked him these questions.

How does this type of sculpture differ from your usual work?

These pieces are definitely a departure from my normal artwork. For years I had been sculpting in bronze, doing figurative, narrative types of work. The screw art was born mostly because I was burnt out on the narrative work, but also because I’m always searching for a “better” sculpture. It has been hard for me to stick to one style of work as I always tend to find something more interesting. In fact, before I got the exposure on the screw art, I had considered taking a break from that to pursue something else.

What do you hope others will get out of these pieces?
When other people look at this work, I hope they can see the amount of thought and work that went into each piece. I feel I have used everything I’ve learned over the past decade, including sculpture, painting, construction etc, to create something that I had never seen before.

Another artist working in a ‘self-assembly’ style is Michael Mapes.

Picture thanks to JL Schnabel.

Again so much patience is involved in the meticulous process involved with each piece, which can be appreciated further, by Michael’s detail and close up shots.

Can you imagine putting these pieces together ? So much patience and concentration needed.

Thanks also to Chiara for showing me these amazing artists and their own preferred choice of media to work with.

If you enjoyed this work you may also like this piece about artist David Adey over at This is Colossal.