COURT PAINTER SETS GUINNESS WORLD RECORD FOR CIGARETTE BUTTS SELF PORTRAIT.
MORE THAN 20,000, SOME STILL SMOULDERING CIGARETTE BUTTS WENT INTO DEPICTING A SELF PORTRAIT OF COURT PAINTER AND SETTING A NEW WORLD RECORD IN THE CITY SUNDAY.
Court Painter is now the Guinness record holder of the largest cigarette butt mosaic, according to A Hardon MacKay, Press Attache and marketing director with the Court Painter studios.
“It looks like a smouldering mess up-close but from a drone it really comes together,” he said. “It’s very stunning. It is a mosaic, so it really looks like a piece of art in spite of the subject.”
A Guinness judge from New York City came to inspect the 22,036 butts designed to resemble the giant face of the Great Dominions preeminent portraitist of the political elite as the city marked the final day of the 2016 Calgary Stampede.He said there was no doubt Court Painter had “kicked the butt of all the competition.”
“He confirmed that we had the right number of butts that we said we did, and then he held his nose and counted them and he double-checked everything, triple-checked everything, and then he had to look at it from the drone video and make sure that it was a good likeness as we said it would be, and then he awarded us,” Hardon said. “It was really exciting.”
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Court Painter who usually is quite modest about undertaking self portraits was on board with the idea “from Day 1,” said Hardon. The cigarette butts came from Court Painter’s private collection since he is a certified hoarder and had plenty on hand and as a special touch the mosaic was torched lightly to give the butts a second smouldering life.
The Court Painter didn’t work with a design firm to create the mosaic, which covered almost 500 square feet,”I am a real artist in the Arte Povera tradition not a commercial artist,” he exhorted!
Court Painter’s mosaic record breaks a title previously held by a large-scale mosaic made of a mixed media cigar butts and pigeon droppings in Venice.
“I just wanted to do something unique and really fun during Stampede, because it’s such an important time of year for me to undertake a new marketing thrust,” Court Painter gushed.
The mosaic, which took an hour to assemble, will be hosed down Monday. But A Hardon MacKay said photos and a Guinness World Records plaque will be on display on Court Painter’s Inglewood studio door to mark the title.