Artistically Recycled Roaches

Dubbed, quite aptly really. Chronic Art, Pittsburgh-based artist Cliff Maynard has painstakingly created splendid spliff - based portraits from the discarded roaches, hand-crafted and quite stunning in their appearance. 38-year-old tattooist Cliff is an ex art student who devised his unique choice of portraiture medium through studying mosaics at art school.
Kind of - sort of - making a hazy, and possibly cannabis based connection, his high-induced moment of illumination saw him seeing a direct comparison between roach papers and mosaic tiles, the inspiration provided by the amazing mosaic artistry of ancient times only reinforced by experiences accumulated during years of tattooing.

These things played a big part in the creation of his art works, and the sheer inventiveness of Cliff's work is the thing that has captivated so many admirers. remember though that meticulous methodology and craft goes into creating each roach inspired piece, Chris cutting up the already small roach papers to obtain much more intricate shapes, before painstakingly putting the portraits together, creating likenesses of each celebrity chosen.
These used roaches are of course multi-tonal, lighter and darker shades helping form the facial features and providing light and shade areas, untold thousands of spliffs undoubtedly smoked to facilitate the gathering together of enough roach papers for the purpose

This astonishing artist says that he himself has, for over fifteen years, accumulated roach papers by saving them, though now he gets many donated. When beginning his series only a single image each year was produced, but roaches donated by so many frequent users, enabled him to increase that as time went by. In spite of the US illegality of cannabis, nearly half of all Americans are estimated to have tried it.

Even though one can, worryingly, be arrested, fined and jailed under federal laws in the States for possession, which Cliff freely admits to fretting about at times, because of his art. This was the main reason for his not going public sooner. Modern drives to legalize marijuana have made a huge difference, and this artist, whose impressive works now sell well, for between $1,000 to $10,000.
Cliff can requireas long as 72 hours of solid effort to finish just one 8" ×10" portrait, making this art form pretty labour-intensive, to say the least. He now undertakes does private commissions, and designed the 2009 Seattle Hempfest official collectors-edition poster.

Examples of his art were first published in the issue 73, Jan/Feb issue of Cannabis Culture Magazine. Using an X-acto knife to cut up to three pieces from each roach, he then puts them together again in the form of the big picture he has in mind to create.
Cliff Maynard has undoubtedly discovered a unique artistic niche with this genre, each image is coated with layers of glue, to strengthen it. Chronic art is a totally new concept, artistically created as recognizable images, fans always impatient for more and no wonder.
All images used with permission