Post #613873 by tigertail777 on Mon, Nov 14, 2011 3:04 AM

Here is a new piece... a very strange and weird piece. I have never done any really "artsy fartsy" art, especially anything using recycled materials before but figured it would be interesting to give it a try. I was invited to a group art show that will be displayed in the lobby of the theater I volunteer at, with the theme being Christmas gifts. I knew I would not have time to make a full painting so thought over what to do. While I was cracking open pistachio nuts I had the thought of how interesting it would look to paint these nut shells. Then I had another idea; I wondered if I could make a primitive lenticular out of them. For those that don't know, lenticulars are those pictures with a special plastic laminated on top that when you tilt them they appear to move or change. Basically how this works is there is several pictures sliced into thin strips and then meshed together in such a way that they separate each other with every other line. Then the special plastic has lines in it that act something like a magnifying glass so that when you tilt the picture you only see one set of lines that go together and form a full picture, tilt it the other way and you see the other set of lines and a different picture. It actually works much like the lines on a TV screen.

So my idea was since the nutshells are concave and only show one side at a time when tilted they could conceivably act like a lenticular with three separate picture views: straight on, tilted to the left, and tilted to the right. I knew that because the painting in the the nutshells would not offer a very high "resolution" due to the dot size when viewed that it would have to be a very simple and basic subject. Since the theme of the show was Christmas gifts I decided to dig into my roots; I was born in Honolulu and some of our Christmas traditions stem from when we lived in Hawaii, for instance I have to play a Hawaiian Christmas record we have every year as we bake cookies. I have always liked pineapples; both the flavor and the form and their symbolism of hospitality so decided that was a simple enough subject for the straight on part. With a little testing I realized the two side views would have to be even simpler and went with the Christmas colors of red and green. I almost went with the title of "Mele Kalikimaka Pineapple", but felt the viewers would need a bit of a hint to look at it from different sides. So may I present "Red & Green Pineapple" to you. It is painted pistachio nut shells glued to a recycled wood tray that has been wood burned.

First the straight on view:

From the left where it becomes a red pineapple:

From the right where it becomes a green pineapple:

Bottom and side view showing some of the tapa wood burn design:

Not sure I will try anything like this again anytime soon, but it was an interesting experiment and I kind of like the primitive feel of it. Don't know if it will sell or not at the show but it was fun to do. :wink: