Artist Creates Stunning Portraits With Old Wine Corks

Treehugger   
August 20th, 2012

Walt Stoneburner/Flikr

By Melissa Breyer

To anyone who has ever hoarded wine corks with a wealth of fabulous upcycling projects in mind — I’ll make a memo board! Trivets for everyone! I’ll build a raft! — let Grand Rapids-based illustrator and artist Scott Gundersen be your inspiration. Part George Seurat, part folk-art genius, the portraits put the wine-soaked beauty of the corks to their best advantage, using the depths of the stains to create light and shadow. The results are picture-perfect.

© Scott Gundersen

© Scott Gundersen

Working in what may be one the world’s most beautiful studios, Gundersen starts with an under-drawing created from a photograph and uses a clever attachment system to adhere the nails. He says:

After my under-drawing is complete I shoot small finish nails through the back of the image. This allows me to push the corks onto the nails without using an adhesive that may be difficult to remove if I need to adjust a corks placement. Its also clean and allows me to work fast.

© Scott Gundersen
Grace (96″ by 66″) required 9217 wine corks.

© Scott Gundersen
Jeanne (46″ by 57″) required 3842 wine corks.

© Scott Gunderson
Trisha (46″ by 56″) required 3,621 recycled wine corks.

To keep up with Gundersen’s adventures with cork, you can follow him on Twitter @scottgundersen or Tumblr.

This story originally appeared at Treehugger

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