By: John Page
I was going to write the next series about a non-guitar related art piece but I changed my mind. About a year ago I was commissioned to build a guitar for a client. When I first accepted the order I wasn’t going to be starting it for awhile so we left the details hanging. As the start date got closer, the client asked about making it an art piece. For me this is the best of all worlds, mix my two great passions, guitars and visual art!
We talked about which way to go with this piece. He asked me if I had anything that I had been wanting to do. I have many fine artists that I have worked with over the years, so I initially thought that maybe we should tap into one of them and do a “fine art” painted piece, but I also offered an option that had been brewing in my sick little brain for a while. The idea was to create an art guitar based on a mixed media piece that I had done back in 2005.
The piece, “Woman is the Machine” (here on out I will call it WITM to save on typing), was a multiple flat panel piece, gold leafed and aged. I had this whole “Metropolis” vision in my head when I made it; you know the deco/industrial revolution kind of thing, mixed with a statement about women and their role in society and in each of our lives. It was different than anything I had done before, or since for that matter.
Here’s a shot of the original art piece:
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The client was keen on the idea. He asked me to supply him with some sketches as I solidified the concept. My sketches are usually so rough no one could possibly follow them, except maybe me (I even get lost in them half of the time), and my close art friend Pamelina. Anyway, to try and somewhat capture the concept I went to work in Photoshop. I knew it wouldn’t turn out anywhere near “realistic”, but I figured I’d give it a shot and it would be easier to interpret than my rough chicken scratchings!
What I had in my head was to re-create a version of this piece in 3-D, built into the depth of the instrument, with a thin Plexiglas top affixed. The art piece would be inside of the guitar, but seen from outside. The mechanics of musical creation for most of us, the women we have loved and sometime lost, the foundation of all that happens in the world, our Muses, laboring inside of our “musical mistress”… our guitar! I love the idea, but can I make it happen?
I spent countless hours creating layer after layer of sections of this piece on the computer. From the Chrysler Building to full nude profiles, from photographing rusted gears to fabricating nipples.
Here are some screen shots showing the kind of layers I had to create:
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To give you an idea of how many files needed to be created to do this, here’s a screen shot of all of the files for this piece:
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After all these hours I still hadn’t touched a piece of wood, I hadn’t begun the physical guitar yet. This exercise served a two-fold purpose, 1 – for me to develop the design beyond it being just an artistic thought flitting through my head, and 2 – a visual tool to present to the client to attempt to show him the artistic concept. The client liked the concept but as we talked about it he thought it’d be cool to age it all, to have the mechanism be worn and rusty.
So, throws a bit of a twist into the design, since the original premise was to probably go with gold leaf (like the original WITM). As I work on the piece I’ll be experimenting with other leaf as well, like copper, as well as several aging/patina techniques. I guess we’ll all just have to wait and see how the final piece turns out, eh?
Here’s the final art from the Photoshop sessions:
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In my next column I’ll be starting to work on the physical body. I foresee this project taking quite a bit of time, but hey, nothing good comes easy. Talk to you soon!
