Below are a few other miniature cut-outs that I’ve produced in the past. Incidentally, all of these, including the Temptations diorama, will be on display at the Scott Eder Gallery in New York City, among other 2-D work, in January for the HOTWIRE #3 show. I’ll have more details about that soon.
cut-out miniatures from Abandoned Cars
Above: Good Cop/Bad Cop; Below: “BUST”, which was inspired by an incident I witnessed from my apartment window when I was in my mid-twenties. Although I originally designed and drew these characters over ten years ago, I still like their energy, and think, once the Temptations diorama is finished, I’ll redraw them and design a backdrop.
I have several cut-out designs from around the time I produced the scene above: Others include two drinking buddies fighting in a back alley, Frank Sinatra, an old man (Retiree) working at a Union 76, a growling dog, on and on. In fact, two of those earlier designs – “Man Practicing Tai-Chi” and “Crazy Dude” – were revamped and included in the “American Standard Minature Cut-Out Collectible Series” of Abandoned Cars. Originally, the idea was to produce these as life-size lawn ornaments. I didn’t occur to me to make them as miniatures until relatively recently. Nevertheless, the designs for them have accumulated over the years. Although I like them as miniatures, I still want to see them all some day as life-size depictions, even the dioramas. I don’t see why they can’t exist as both. Below is a more recent one, about six years old: A bum I saw sleeping outside a bodega near where I lived in Crown Heights, Brooklyn:
Here’s a woman with her child I saw on an Upper West Side (around 105th St.) street corner:
Below is a busker named Ken, who I met in Geneva and was one of my buddy Jesse’s friends:
Here’s a young Chuck Berry. This is one of the miniature cut-outs from Abandoned Cars. You can still see the old Chuck Berry perform at a bar called Blueberry Hill (roughly once a month) very near where I live now in St Louis:
Chuck Berry above; Rocker Chick below
These are also fun to group together, as well as stand on their own: