Aug 2, 2006
08:01 AM
The Life

Steve Maloney - heir extraordinaire

By admin
Steve Maloney - click photo to read Airport Lost and Found"Since retiring in the late 1980s, Steve Maloney has spent most of his time making art. Although heir to the fortune of W.E. Upjohn (scion of the pharmaceutical company, now Pfizer), he's hardly a household name. But he's working on it. He has publicists in California and New York City to spread his name as thickly and evenly as the resin and acrylic he uses on his collages and assemblages."

"Slowly, surely, it's working. Especially since he unveiled Banned Booty, a portfolio of 12 works (10 sculptural paintings and two installations) assembled from items that the Transportation Security Administration confiscated at six California airports after Sept. 11, 2001. [...] He bought the items at auctions sight unseen for $1 a pound. The contraband cache included everything from nail clippers to toy guns, cigar cutters to cigarette lighters, Swiss Army knives to scissors, corkscrews to water pistols, bicycle kickstands to frying pans, and needle-nose pliers to doctors' reflex hammers."

[...] "The centerpiece of the series is Houdini Booty Lock-Up, a huge bulletproof Plexiglas cube stenciled with airport destinations (LAX, SMF, OAK, SNA, ONT, SMP) and wrapped with 60 feet of hand-painted rusty chains and antique padlocks. The cube is crammed with seized leftovers that include knives, pliers, corn-on-the-cob skewers, barbells, blender blades, and the most unusual item that Maloney has acquired: a pair of deer antlers."

[...] "Then there's Naughty Booty, a free-form resin sculpture of items such as phallic cigarette lighters and a pair of faux leopard skin handcuffs — highlighted by neon fiber optics and slashes of paint surrounded by Fellini-inspired, X-rated pencil drawings of males and females."

[Read more in Airport Lost and Found.]

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