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Professional Drywaller Creates Insanely Detailed Wall Sculptures—Using Joint Compound!

Bernie Mitchell is "The Mud Michelangelo"

By Rain Noe - February 8, 2016

in Materials | Interior/Exhibition Design

In the Industrial Design department at Pratt, they taught us how to spray thinned joint compound onto our mock-ups. It was the quickest way to get sandably-smooth paint-ready surfaces on tricky shapes. For the rest of society, joint compound is something you use to patch holes, seal seams and get surfaces flush. But in the hands of Canada-based Bernie Mitchell, joint compound isn't smoothed flat at all; instead he builds it up, creating surprisingly detailed wall sculptures that far surpass the material's humble original purpose.

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"The key is to work on a wall where the light comes in at an angle," Mitchell told The Journal of Light Construction (who refers to him as the "Mud Michelangelo"). "When you're done, you have something that's always responding to the light moving across it. I never get tired watching it change throughout the day."

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What most amazed me about Mitchell's process are some of the tools he uses, which you can see in the video below:

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Watching that, I was like "A putty knife, are you kidding me?" I don't know how the heck he keeps it so clean between strokes; when I'm doing something as mundane as patching screwholes, if I don't scrape the thing every few seconds, it crusts on the blade and leaves tracks on the next surface.

Then again, Mitchell is a pro, and I assume he's got the mixing and wiping down to a science. As a professional drywall contractor he's been taping joints for decades; in the early 1990s he began "experimenting with raised panels on wall surfaces where natural light had a positive effect as a relief form," according to his bio.

Now, after 20-something years of mastering the technique, Mitchell is preparing to release a series of video tutorials in hopes of passing the art on to others. Interested parties, watch this space for updates.

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Mark T

8 years ago

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Rain, can you describe the method you learned at Pratt regarding thinning joint compound and applying it to models?

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- Rain Noe
  
  Mark T
  
  8 years ago
  
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  Sure thing, it was pretty simple: They had us thin joint compound with water, then drop it into a spray gun--I can't remember the brand, but it was a minimalist model that consisted of just the trigger and a small canister, about the size of one of those mini Coke cans. Then you hooked it up to the compressor and sprayed it on, being sure to keep the gun moving so as not to get caking and drips. I want to say we held the guns about 12" from the target, but this was a long time ago. It was important to disassemble the gun and rinse everything out *immediately* after spraying, because if the JC dried inside, your gun was finished. The "art," as opposed to science, parts of this process were 1) thinning the JC with the appropriate amount of water, 2) the distance between the gun and the target and 3) how quickly you kept the gun moving. I remember there was a fair amount of trial and error involved.
  
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- Rain Noe
  
  Mark T
  
  8 years ago
  
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  Also, we did this in a spray booth; the overspray was messy.
  
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  - Mark T
    
    Rain Noe
    
    8 years ago
    
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    Thanks, Rain. The timing of your article was rather fortuitous for me. I was asked to make a stage prop for my 6-yr old's play in March. I was figuring on using insulation foam panels for the buck, but wasn't sure what I was going to do for the outer surface. The tinted jc sounded like a perfect solution, inexpensive, easy (relatively) to work with outside of the clean up and fussiness of applying with a spray gun. Thanks again!
    
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Juan Cano

8 years ago

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That must be a special kind of spoon; that's the only way I can rationalize what he does. Amazing.

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