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Inspiration – Starting from Scratch
Craig McCudden, 44, Artist
Columbus, OH
Craig McCudden has been "threatening" to enter Red Bull Art of Can for years now, but only in 2009 did he finally decide to give it a go. The wait has paid off with a piece that's almost Byzantine in its intricacy: "Inspiration – Starting from Scratch."
The name of the work is a play on McCudden's preferred medium: the 44-year-old is a self-taught, full-time illustrator and scratchboard artist, creating highly detailed etchings in ink-covered clay that usually concentrate on themes of nature and rock and roll. McCudden created his entry for the Washington exhibition in homage to the late Rick Griffin, who designed iconic posters for bands including the Grateful Dead and was an underground comics pioneer. The Columbus-based McCudden describes the 3-D tribute like this: "I scratched and then painted with watercolor and then re-scratched. The creature is carved foam, and then clad with parts that were all hand cut from cans. The frame is recycled and has 11 various coats of paint. The lettering is 18-karat gold leaf. Each letter is hand cut and then stripped out with enamel paint." Altogether, the work contains more than 7,000 pieces and required around 350 hours to complete. In radical understatement, McCudden sums up, "I dig minutia." |