The King Remembered In Matchsticks
11:40 Friday, July 4, 2008
This is a model of Elvis Presley that has been constructed out of 50,000 matchsticks. It took 500 hours to create and was sold for over $35,000. Scottish artist David Mach spent 3 months of his life building the model. He has also created sculptures of Buddha, smaller Elvis heads, a bear, a gorilla and a ram. The models are believed to be popular but are of course highly flammable.
I made a matchstick model once. I glued 4 matchsticks to a single central matchstick and then stuck a piece of old yellow gum on the top, giving me an extremely life-like representation of Paris Hilton. I swapped it for a copy of her album "Paris" but I reckon I got a bad deal in the end.
Viewing the matchstick sculptures and the matchstick in a coffin reminded me of what the Rhinestone Cowboy himself, Glen Campbell said after he played an unbelievable acoustic guitar.
In a prescient move that predated the sustainable wood debate by a mere 60 years this guitar was imagined and created in the somewhat slower paced-world of the 1930s. "Two lucky strikes and a box was how you asked for your cigarettes and matchsticks back then. It's unlikely that anyone else on the planet came home with boxes like these though.
You might see Glen's fingers get burned up with his 'amazing' performance.