Posted on 08/17/2009 5:50:49 AM PDT by Schnucki
Sculptor Alex Queral, 51, from Philadelphia, US, has hand crafted some of the world's most famous faces including President Obama, Jack Nicholson, Bob Dylan and Spartan Kirk Douglas.
With a deft hand he has even recreated the actor Patrick Swayze and Sharbat Gula, the Afghan woman with amazing eyes who was made famous by National Geographic magazine.
And in an admirable green-fingered move, the artist got his idea and started chipping away when he noticed piles of unused phone books just lying around.
He said: "Every year when the new phone book comes out you see just piles of the old ones lying around waiting for collection.
"I'm sure a lot of hard work goes into recycling them but there are thousands that go unused at all because most people just use the internet to find people these days.
"I was out looking for wood to make a sculpture one day and I noticed a huge pile of them on the pavement. I suddenly thought they would probably make a pretty good material for carving, so I gave it a go."
The resourceful artist now produces up to two new impressions every month and has been crafting his works for 14 years.
He begins by selecting his famous face and copies it by freehand sketching.
His drawing is then placed over the phone book as a template and he uses an artist's scalpel or basic razor blades to patiently slice away at the thousands of pages inside the famous book.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
thanks for posting this
Who’s that at the top? Richard Petty?
LOL! That’s a keeper!
Leni
Rein in the eyebrows on Jack and it looks more like Ernest Borgnine.
While the art is cool and the artist talented, in looking over his subject matter: Obama, Che, Ed Asner, Jimmy Carter, Michael Moore...he’s just another butt-screaming leftist.
I’ll need to see that top one’s ID.
I dunno....these days the Admin Mods are so zealous about “fishy” images that I wasn’t sure this would be unceremoniously zapped by one of them too....
You just never know...
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