When you think “thread and nails,” you might remember the peg knitting kits in which you wind thread around four nails in a spool and create a knit lanyard.
This blog post is not about that, although it is about nails and thread. And a Ukranian artist Zenyk Palagniuk, who wrapped 15 miles of thread around 13,000 nails to create a piece of art–the likeness of Justin Timberlake.
Palagniuk first sketched the image on a board, then pounded nails into the board and began wrapping the thread in straight lines over and over until there were dark and light areas on the board. After 200 hours of wrapping, Justin Timberlake was complete.
Justin Timberlake © Zenyk Palagniuk.
To my surprise, Palagniuk is not the first artist to do this. Kumi Yamashita, a Japanese artist living in New York, pioneered the idea of thread wrapping. She paints the wood panels a solid white, drives galvanized nails into the substrate, and then uses one continues thread to create her portraits.
Mana 2, from the Constellation project by Kumi Yamashita.
She calls her work Constellation, in honor of the Greeks who traced figures into the sky, using the stars as guides. Her Constellation series was in the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. in 2014.
Yamashita has another project, called Light and Shadow. In it, she places objects carefully and then lights them to create an unexpected silhouette. Her work is magical.
“Origami” © Kumi Yamashita
“I construct single or multiple objects and place them in relation to a single light source. The complete artwork is therefore comprised of both the material (the solid objects) and the immaterial (the light or shadow).” [Quote from Yamashita’s website.]
Untitled (Child) © Kumi Yamashita
I always admire artists who step away from the popular ideas of art and experiment, explore and create unusual, amazing and surprising art.
Have a creative weekend!
—Quinn McDonald is a writer who loves unlikely creativity.