finding an NPR segment

November 11, 2009 9:41 AM

I heard part of a feature about this eccentric artist's extraordinary technique on NPR just this weekend - so why can't I find any reference to him/it anywhere?

This was definitely on NPR & I thought I'd easily caught enough information to track down the right segment. But I'm not even getting warm. It was an interview with a documentary maker, I think, and her subject was an obsessive visionary eccentric artist who had spent years on one (life sized?) portrait done with ludicrously microscopic pencil strokes. She talked about her overwhelming shivery physical reaction the first time she examined his work closely, and said it was NOT pointillism. I thought she said the portrait was of Marilyn Monroe and that the artist was trying to attract David Hockney's interest in his unique technical achievement? (I only heard what seemed to be the middle of this feature so I guess it's possible I got totally the wrong end of the stick?)

posted by Jody Tresidder to media & arts (6 answers total)

Sounds like Billy Pappas is the guy you're after. The documentary is Waiting for Hockney.

Segment on Studio 360.
posted by dlugoczaj at 10:00 AM on November 11, 2009

He made her two front teeth way too wide.
posted by delmoi at 10:30 AM on November 11, 2009

That's cool. Almost like an engraver. (Think about the detail on a piece of currency- someone sat and had to scrape out all those tiny, tiny lines.)
posted by gjc at 10:40 AM on November 11, 2009

dlugoczaj

Thank you very, very much.
posted by Jody Tresidder at 10:43 AM on November 11, 2009

Also, dlugoczaj,
I've just seen your second link shows the documentary is coming up this month on the Sundance channel - which I get. Better & better!
posted by Jody Tresidder at 10:47 AM on November 11, 2009

(The documentary maker wasn't kidding - when you go up close to his Marilyn from your main link - it's as though you can smell her hair!)
posted by Jody Tresidder at 10:56 AM on November 11, 2009