Artist Don Porcella and Geoffrey – Cute! 

Do you remember doing arts and crafts back in elementary school, and the teacher would give you a handful of colored pipe cleaners and you were supposed to make art out of them? I think I used to make stick people or stick dogs or a stick house, just meaningless crap, really.

But you know, it was fun to twist those colored pipe cleaners and imagine you were making some kind of neat thing that your Mom would think was cool enough to tack onto the family fridge. Nostalgia! Well guess what, some people actually have enough talent and imagination make real actual art of out pipe cleaners. One of those individuals is artist Don Porcella, who Geoffrey and I had the pleasure to meet this past Saturday evening when we were gallery hopping in Chelsea.

Over at the Clair Oliver Gallery (located at 513 West 26th Street) Don has a bunch of his tiny pipe cleaner sculptures on display upstairs plus one life-sized work entitled An Art Dealer and his Artist, which depicts an art dealer with a pet artist (Don) on a leash. Clever!

Geoffrey and I spent some time talking to Don and he is super friendly and nice. Don explained that the Artist sculpture (on display in the downstairs gallery) is made out of 25,000 woven pipe cleaners! It should be on display through late June. You can see more of Don’s art, which is really cool and fun, on his blog, Don Porcella Blogspot. Thanks Don for being awesome!

Don Also Made These Pipe Cleaner Sneakers!