ARTIST WINS AWARD FOR LINCOLN PENNY PORTRAIT

A penny saved might be a penny that earned $200,000 — so knows Battle Creek graphic designer Richard Schlatter, the grand prize public vote winner of this year’s ArtPrize for his 24,000-penny, 12-foot-tall portrait, “A. Lincoln.”

U.S. Government teacher Tak Ready considers his pennies lucky. He also has a penny presidential portrait of Abraham Lincoln hanging in his Traverse City West Senior High School classroom.

Beautifully crafted with 6,000 pennies by his best friend and fellow educator, David Kirby, the 4-foot-by-6-foot portrait took on added meaning over the weekend when the larger penny portrait of Lincoln took first place in the international Grand Rapids ArtPrize Nine competition.

And though Schlatter took home the $200,000 top prize for his at this year’s ArtPrize, the 48-year-old Ready said he values his penny portrait even more.

“I did see the penny portrait in Grand Rapids a few weeks ago,” said Ready. “It was massive and pretty impressive. The one in Grand Rapids is cool, but Kirb’s is better. Plus, the one in Grand Rapids is way too big — 12-feet-tall-by-8-feet-wide — and would never fit in my classroom.”

Penny art has been around since pennies themselves. Because of the varied hues of copper, brown, tan — and steel pennies from the World War II years — pennies offer an almost endless opportunity for artistic expression.

“It’s very, very heavy,” said Kirby, who teaches physics at the same high school. “There is a pattern of special pennies throughout Tak’s portrait — special dates, penny versions including Indian Head and a WWII steelie. The portrait required a lot of problem solving. Where do you get a working surface that big, since it had to hold two copies of it at once?”

The answer? A table tennis table located in Kirby’s boathouse.

“I created the portrait twice, both full size,” said Kirby. “After the penny placement was perfect, I had to pick up a row of 200 pennies in a reverse order — a big stack — then transfer them to the second piece of canvas, lay them down in forward order and then glue them down with shoe goo, over and over and over.”

Getting the enormous penny portrait to school to surprise his friend became another matter.

“It’s like a copper blanket that you can’t roll up, or fold, and is heavy as sin,” said Kirby.

He and his son, Cooper, walked it into West Senior High School and left (the penny portrait) in the cafeteria for Ready to see, just before Christmas in 2013.

“When I walked in to school later that morning through the cafeteria, and saw a huge penny portrait hanging there on a wooden frame, my jaw dropped in amazement,” Ready recalled. “I knew right away Kirb’ had made it. When I later found out it was a gift for me to put in my classroom, I knew I had received the best gift ever.

To read the complete article, see:
Smaller version of $200K ArtPrize winner hangs in high school (http://www.record-eagle.com/news/local_news/presidential-pennies-on-the-dollar/article_2eef083c-b775-5c13-8daf-1c523b296656.html)

Over 24,000 Lincoln pennies were used to create a portrait of Abraham Lincoln. Included are the use of 1,681 1943 steel pennies (for the shirt). Every year from 1909, the first year of the Lincoln cents, through 2017 is represented in the piece, which measures 8 feet wide by 12 feet high—a total of 96 square feet. It took about 315 hours to complete. The image changes as the viewer moves from side to side and views the piece from different angles and distances.

To read the complete article, see:
A. Lincoln (http://www.artprize.org/65175)

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