MultiPolar

etsy shop: MultiPolar
listing: ITS OK
artist: Sighn

The Etsy shop, MultiPolar, is run by MultiPolar Projects, a loosely collaborative collective who represents various artists in Chicago.

"ITS OK" is a hand-cut sculpture which is a "limited" edition series of 1 million. The phrase "it's ok" has a universal appeal that can refer to countless things which ties in perfectly to the massive scale of this edition. The artist, Sighn, provides some great insight in this video.

Here's a transcript of the video:

I wanted to make sure that whatever phrase I picked I would want to cut out and repeat a million times. So I was careful of what phrase I picked out and really felt that "it's ok" was the perfect mantra to repeat over and over again.

One of the reasons for working on this project was to use up all the scrap pieces from larger projects and all the found materials that have been building up in my studio. The first 500 are really out of an interesting array of all sorts of different types of wood that have come through my life in the last 5 to 10 years. There's quite a bit of prep work before cutting the piece as far as pulling together all the materials and cutting them all to the same general size.

So as a completely entire edition, I've begun to standardize the process. I took the original and had it photocopied to create a template for the project. All the copies are placed on a piece of paper stuck to the wood. Even though there is a template, each piece is hand-cut creating a unique piece in and of itself. The actual cutting of the piece itself is quite therapeutic doing the same thing over and over again.

The most exciting part in the entire process is when you're able to remove the positive from the negative. And then it actually finally exists. All that hard work is worth it.

I keep all the reverse pieces for authenticity as well as keeping a record for myself to prove to me that I actually did it. So it's my physical record for myself. And when the entire edition is complete, I'd like to show them all together. A million times. It's OK.

Even though I'm cutting out so many of these, I'm very careful to make sure that they'll still refined. Each piece comes with a hand-numbered card explaining a little bit more about the project. I really enjoy the close to impossible challenge that this project creates. This project will definitely grow old with me because it will probably take my entire life to create.