On the occasion of our 25th anniversary, the Scene asked 25 of our favorite local artists, painters, designers and printmakers to art up our newspaper boxes and turn them into something uniquely Nashville. Every Monday and Wednesday on Country Life, we'll be highlighting a specific artbox and give you a little insight into each artist's creative practice.
Today's artist is Huxley King, whose art box is dispensing papers at its new location at the Vanderbilt Children's Hospital. Look through some other examples of Huxley's work after the jump.
• What was the inspiration behind your box design?
I knew immediately that I wanted to cover the majority of the box in needlework — it’s a medium I’m really just now fully delving into and I wanted a challenge. But it wasn’t until we picked up the box and saw its unique shape that the FACE really made itself seen. Perhaps it had something to do with my recent trip to Atlanta to see Xperimental Puppetry Theater, but I loved the idea — especially of turning the door into a mouth, teeth and all. The fuzziness of the faux fur turned out to be a good call, too, as it made my little Scene Monster so very pet-able. He really did turn into a lovable, goofy, and very large puppet!
• What materials did you use?
Black plastic canvas, acrylic yarn in various obnoxiously bright colors, screws (a lot of hardware is holding that thing together), some very luscious faux fur I purchased on eBay, two enormous googly eyes, and some stuffed horns from a discarded hat.
• When you're not making Nashville Scene newspaper boxes, what kind of art do you make?
As I mentioned above, I am really having fun exploring the possibilities of the yarn needlework at the moment — the relative hugeness of some of the panels I made for my Scene box has inspired me to make some large abstract pattern-heavy pieces in the future. The needlework grew out of my love of crochet, and the resultant overabundance of yarn in my house, but illustration was really my first creative love. I’m probably best known for my contribution to The Graphic Canon series — my Pride and Prejudice even made it onto the cover of Volume Two, which was a real thrill to this lit nerd. But I also am occasionally recognized for my rare forays into performance art … every now and then someone will narrow their eyes, examine me closely, and blurt out, “Weren’t you that mime I saw at the art crawl?”
