Original baseball card art
In the summer of 1985, I was 8 years old and my grandfather kept spoiling me with baseball cards. I'd open up a few wax packs per day, pop in the stick of gum and start shuffling through cards. My favorite player was Sandberg, and I was lucky enough to pull several! Made with acrylic paint on plywood.
More about my giant sticks of Topps Chewing Gum
The last card inside a junk era wax pack would often get stuck to, or stained by, the piece of gum inside. My childhood memories of chewing hard sticks of bubble gum became the inspiration for making these large scale gum sticks. My gum sticks are typically tilted by 9 degrees, as a nod to the starting 9 on the diamond.
- My gum stick paintings are done on plywood as homage to the game's wooden bats. I hand bevel the wood with a router to create the proper shape, which also captures highlights on the edges and supplies nice drop shadows on the wall.
- The sticks are painted with my own multi-layer technique, making them look realistic.
- Each gum stick measures 12" x 36" and is designed to hang on a rotated angle of 9 degrees. This represents how the gum is typically positioned imperfectly inside the package.
- Each painting ships ready to hang, with hardware already installed.
- A printed and signed description of the artwork will be attached to the back prior to shipping.
- All pieces are original artwork by yours truly, Matthew Lee Rosen.
