Push Pin Art

Eric Daigh has truly mastered the art of the push pin portrait. He uses photos of family and friends to create these huge works of art. He chooses a photograph, reduces it to pixels, and then uses the printout as a pattern for his portrait. He places one pushpin for each pixel. These push pin mosaics are usually 3-by-4 foot or 4-by-6 foot. That's an awful lot of push pins. The smaller works can have up to 11,000 push pins, and the larger works can have up to 25,000 pins! He has made push pin portraits using a static grid - with rows and columns - but has decided he prefers an offset method that allows him to use up to 15% more pins and create a higher resolution for the work. Eric Daigh uses only 5 colors of push pins in his artworks: red, blue, yellow, white, and black. Since he buys his push pins in bulk and they don't come with black, he spray paints the green push pins to create black push pins.



Eric, who is from Traverse City, Michigan, can sometimes get up to $50,000 for one of his push pin portraits. He can usually place about 4,000 push pins a day, and often gets blisters on his fingers from this labor-intensive art form. Visit him at his website to see more of his work and read his bio. The gallery on his website allows you to zoom in and out on each push pin portrait so you can experience what it would be like to see the artwork up close and from a distance!

The iconic Mario Brothers by Nintendo is a beloved subject that has been reproduced by many fans. Check out these tributes to Mario done in push pins! That first one is so detailed it amazes me. I can't imagine how long it must have taken to complete. My thumbs are sore just thinking about it. Click on the photos to visit the site where these were found.

Another artist who has used pins to create amazing works of art is Devorah Sperber. Instead of using push pins, however, she chooses to use maptacks. Thousands of maptacks are pierced through clear vinyl to create these works. Her subject matter for these works is icons and symbols of the 1960's and 1970's, like this red bandana, shown with close up of pins.



The bikini with the American Flag design is my favorite. She designed this one with 3 different cuts - the string bikini (shown below), the thong bikini, and the French cut bikini. Check out the close up of the bikini to see the pins!



Devorah Sperber's maptack collection was created in 2001. She also uses many other items to create mosaic-style works of art, including spools of thread, Letraset marker caps, and chenille stems (pipe cleaners). Check out her website to see more of her work and read her artist statement.