Cheesy Carl Boursinstein Dreams of Victory!

In April of 2012, I gave the piece below, “Cheesy Carl Boursinstein Dreams of Victory!” to friends who own a grilled cheese restaurant in San Francisco. Their proximity to the ball park meant that they served a lot of Giants fans, so it seemed only fitting that Carl should dream of the Giants logo made out of cheese. His name is Carl Boursinstein because he is made out of newspaper, the same newspaper mosaic technique I used for my self-portrait. You can see it on the restaurant’s facebook page: The American Grilled Cheese Kitchen, or just go into their South park location to see it in person!

I carved the logo out of foam, and initially tried to spray paint it, but ran into the problem of the foam acting like a sponge instead of a surface. The texture was all wrong, so I covered it in pieces of a cut-up cotton t-shirt and then applied layers of paint to it. That method gave me the smoothness I was after, but if I were to do it again, now, I would use a different glue to attach the cotton and I would spray on some Plasti-dip before moving on to the paint. But, we live and learn. Below you can see the process of the logo:

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I created Carl out of newspaper (LA Weeklys, just like “Face It” and “Nolan’s Fireplace“), and this time I chose to use pieces that were all pictures of fur and hair. I think it helped him appear fuzzy and soft. One of the source images I used the most for him was Henry Rollins‘s author picture- circa 2012, back when he had a fuzzy buzzed head. His current picture (see link) is wispier, and would make for some interesting texture on a future piece…

I named him “Carl Boursinstein” after Carl Bernstein, one of the Watergate reporters. After he was complete, I realized I had made him look a lot like Rizzo the rat, which makes sense given how much I love the Muppets.

I stopped in to see him on my last visit to San Francisco, and realized he could use a little re-glueing in places (and needs a piece on his tail replaced). He lives above the tomato soup, so considering the humidity, he’s actually held up well over the years: