Each category of artists featured in this blog is meant to highlight five people, but this post brings our “Unusual Portrait Media” group to nine because each person I read about intrigued me more. I’m forcing myself to close this category for now so that I can conclude with the Mona Lisa, but first, check out these two artists — one meticulous, one whimsical.
Slovenian artist Saťo Krajnc (a.k.a. Cvern) creates incredibly detailed portraits by tightly winding a single sewing thread on a circular wooden or aluminum frame lined with metal nails to create overlapping straight lines that ultimately appear curved. Those thousands of overlapping straight lines allow him to control the shading and facial detail of his subjects.
Pop artist Jason Mecier used make-up as paint for his portrait of Mariah Carey, shown here, which was pretty straightforward. A good portion of his portraits he calls âCelebrity junk drawersâ for which he uses odd bits of âstuffâ associated with that celebrity, sometimes even supplied by that celebrity. But as his website bio notes of his âone of a kind outrageous mosaic portraits,â he suffers no shortage of 
mediums. âHe meticulously fabricates anybody out of anything,â some of which, such as celebrity portraits made of pills (Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston) are a bit sad. On the other hand, Kevin Bacon out of bacon, seems just right. He has made portraits out of cereal, macaroni, and innumerable art pieces out of candy, but quickly makes them inedible with preservative sprays. His art is widely featured on TV and print media.
We featured (mostly) edible food art early on in this blog, and perhaps we will cover once-edible-now-sprayed food art a little later on. There are a bunch of artists who create portraits and human sculptures out of licorice, Fruit Loops, bubble gum, Good & Plenty and Smarties candies â and that list probably just scratches the surface, but weâre leaving them all behind the counter for now.