Pinpression

Do you remember this toy from the late 80s/ early 90s? In my space research class a few weeks ago we looked at the work of some sculptors: Claes Oldenburg, Michael Rakowitz, Louise Bourgeios, Annette Messeger. Using the inspiration of Claes Oldenburg's soft sculptures in particular, we were assigned to find a relatively small, hard object, and recreate it as a large-scale soft sculpture. Originally I bought a bunch of silver sateen fabric intending to scale-up a screw. When I brought my fabric into class to begin working, another student in my class brought it to my attention that he was planning on making a screw as well. I'm so glad he was too, because otherwise I may have not been inspired to think of a new, more exciting object to make. I had been feeling underwhelmed by the idea of making a giant screw but hadn't found a more suitable object to recreate. After brainstorming though I decided I wanted to challenge myself and make a giant Pin Art board!

For those of you that haven't gotten to play with one before, a Pin Art or Pinpression board (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pin_Art) is a toy made of many nails or pins that can slide back and forth through small holes in a rectangle of plastic to create a relief sculpture of your hand, face, or whatever else you may press into the pins.

The finished piece is 3' x 4' and there are 432 2" inch "pins." 212 of those are 3D soft pin sculptures and the remaining 220 are circles of fabric, meant to represent the pins that were not moved with the hand pressed the toy. Each flat pin head circle was hand cut. Each pin was created by machine sewing a tube of fabric, hand sewing a pin head circle to a circular cotton make-up remover pad (so the heads would retain the shape of a flat pin head), and hand sewing the two pieces together. Then, each pin was stuffed with batting.

For the backing I stretched a piece of black cotton over a scrap piece of plywood. The flat head circles were then hot glued onto the black cloth. To attach the 3D screws I had to hand-saw 212 stumps from thick wood dowels, stick the stumps in the tubes, hot glue the stumps in place, and then finally hot glue the bottoms of the stumps to the board. I made a grid and planned out which of the 432 2" spots would be flat and which would be 3D to make up the hand. After everything was secured on the board I hand cut 6 pieces of scrap PVC pipe and glued them down. Then I found and sized a scrap piece of plexiglass to place on top of the pipe pieces.

The most challenging part of this project was handling the mass number of pieces that went into its production. The final assembly could not happen until every piece was ready to go so, with over a thousand pieces to prepare by hand, there was a lot of work to put together at the very end. I am so happy this piece is finished!! SO MUCH time but it was worth it in the end. Plus, my professor chose my piece to be on display in the Art Foundation building hallway, along with 3 other pieces from my class!