Kris Scheifele starts her work by applying thirty to fifty layers of acrylic paint to a wood support. After pulling the dried paint slabs off of the support she carves, peels and slices into them with a box cutter before hanging the skins on a wall and letting gravity take over to finish the creation process as they sag, bend and stretch – not unlike the changes in the elasticity of human skin that we experience as we age.

Gilded Fade, acrylic paint & acetate
approx. 13.5″ x 20″ x 1″

Deep Sea Fade, acrylic paint & acetate
approx. 13″ x 12.5″ x 2.5″
Wouldn’t it be glorious if we could view our own sagging and stretching skin as part of the creative process of a life unfolding?

Medical Fade, acrylic paint & acetate
approx. 13″ x 17″ x 2.5″

Passion Fade, acrylic paint & acetate
approx. 13″ x 17″ x 4″

Bloom Fade, acrylic paint & acetate
approx. 19″ x 13.5″ x 3″
The skins bring to mind slices from polymer clay mokume gane slabs.

Money Fade, acrylic paint & acetate
approx. 14″ x 22″ x 1″

Firework Fade, acrylic paint & acetate
approx. 12″ x 17″ x 1″
“In each Fade, the acrylic paint fades from color to color through the built-up layers creating a gradation. Referring to film and video editing, the fade is a transitional device starting or ending a scene or cross-fading between scenes. Like all things—both ‘good’ and ‘bad’—even transitions end and something new begins. I wanted to meditate on and embrace the certainty of change. Through its impermanence and imperfection, my work reflects on cycles in life as well as cycles in art.”
The images in this post are from the Fade collection. The complete portfolio, which includes two Contortion collections, also boasts a 3D collection, where Scheifele uses the debris from the carvings, explaining: “In the spirit of ‘using every part of the animal,’ the acrylic paint chips are collected in boxes where more time must elapse before they fuse into porous cubes.”

You can easily see the scale of the skins in this image