BUILD ME by Frank Wu

acrylic paint on board with sculptural elements

This is the weirdest, creepiest thing I've done so far - for the weirdest, creepiest story I've ever had the opportunity to illustrate. "Build Me," by my Writer/Illustrator of the Future classmate Ilsa Bick, is about a cyber mutant killer baby. The sculptural elements include little baby hands reaching out toward the viewer. These were made by from baby dolls, using Play-doh for the mold and plaster as the casting material (Play-doh readily dissolves in water, but plaster does not.)

The other sculptural element is a cabinet from a dollhouse, painted black so it looks like prison bars, with a screaming kid face behind it - this symbolizes the psychological horrors of growing up in agonizingly bland middle-America:

The piece was printed, in edited form, in black and white with different proportions in Talebones:

"Build Me" had its public debut at the WonderCon comics convention in Oakland, April, 2002. As it sat on my table in the artists' alley, people would walk by and then stop. Reactions ranged from "Creepy!" to "That's weird!" to "Oh my gosh!" and some of these people let me take their pictures as they were looking at it:

This original piece of artwork, a combination of acrylic collaged with plaster hands and wooden doll furniture, is available for the paltry sum of $2000. Please contact me for details.

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