You Have to Check Out These Insanely Detailed Pop Culture Sculptures

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Play-Doh is not generally considered a pathway to a career in art, but it was exactly that for Brad Hill. Years ago, the aspiring artist was gifted the popular children’s toy and, as a thank you, molded some of it into a head. “I was like, ‘Oh wait. That’s kind of fun,'” Hill said. “Every day, I’d just wake up and sculpt a head out of Play-Doh. And I thought, ‘Well, this isn’t sustainable.'” He was wrong. Fifteen years later, Hill’s work has gone all over the internet, and this week he’s having a retrospective art show featuring not just brand new work, but pieces from throughout his still blossoming career.

The show is happening May 9 from 6-8 p.m. ET at the Bottleneck Gallery in Brooklyn, NY, and to commemorate the event, io9 not only has some exclusive reveals, but we also spoke to Hill for what he believes may have been his first interview. Why Hill? Well, his strikingly unique take on your favorite TV, movies, games, and more combines a handmade, limited collectibility with an unmistakable nostalgia and childlike wonder. It’s a balance that has made his 1:1 art pieces sell instantly at art shows, and his more widely available tiny sculptures, called Peeks, become some of the most sought-after pieces in the pop culture art world. Now he’s even debuting “Freeks,” a kind of mixture of the two.

A 37-year-old resident of Pigeon, Michigan, Hill admits that he’s largely disconnected from the fervor that surrounds his work. “I still have a hard time believing it,” he said. “I live in the middle of nowhere. I’m not really connected. I haven’t done cons. I haven’t done any of that stuff, so it’s very easy for me to just be like ‘Yeah, like this isn’t real.'” But it’s very real. Hill has built a relatively small but dedicated fan base that adores his work, covets it, and pays handsomely for it.

I should know. I’m one of them. In 2019, I camped out for several days on a street to buy one of Hill’s unique pop culture sculptures and continue to collect his work. Oh, and as you read this, there’s already a line for Friday’s show, which features almost 20 new sculptures, 1/1 APs (artist’s proof) of every single Peek ever released (which is about 140 in total), five brand new pieces called Freeks, and more. Below, we talked to Hill about his origins, which included not just Play-Doh but Reddit, and his surprising process—as well as the debut of several new pieces. One you can see above, and here’s another.

For more details on the show, head over to the Bottleneck Gallery website. Here’s our interview with Hill, which has been edited for length.

Germain Lussier, io9: Take me back to the beginning. How did you get into art and specifically sculpting?

Brad Hill: So I’ve been doing art since I was little. Drawing was mainly what I’d mess with. I never really sculpted and I didn’t take art classes in high school or anything. And I don’t know, it was probably like 2010, and my buddy just kind of on a lark, as a thank you for helping him out for something, was like “Here’s this, here’s that, and here’s a whole bunch of Play-Doh.” It was the small containers. And my first reaction was, “Okay, thank you. I don’t know what to do with this, but thank you.”

To show my gratitude I just started sculpting a little head, took a picture of it, and sent it to him. And I was like “Oh wait, that’s kind of fun.” Every day, I’d just wake up and I’d sculpt the head out of Play-Doh. And I was like, “Well, this isn’t sustainable. I can’t just keep using Play-Doh.” So I moved on to other air-dry clay, moved on to polymer clay. And at the same time, I had discovered Mike Mitchell’s art. This is when he was doing Soul Pancake wallpapers. So I was like, “I’m gonna try and sculpt some of his stuff.” And by following him I learned more about pop culture art like Gallery 1988. So I was like “I gonna try doing some of this stuff.”

So I posted on Reddit, just for fun. And one day, I think it was a S’more Puffed one, hit the top of Reddit. Like all of Reddit. And that gave me a lot of motivation. I started doing more pop culture stuff and posted on Reddit some more. And they didn’t tell me who it was, but they said Slashfilm, so I’m guessing it was Peter [Sciretta], he shot an email over to 1988 and they were like “Hey, you want to do a show?” I was like, “I didn’t know that was a possibility. I never knew I could go into art galleries.” Then it just snowballed from there. Eventually, I started working with Bottleneck.

Note: I worked at Slashfilm around this time and talked to Sciretta about this. He doesn’t remember reaching out to Gallery 1988 specifically about Hill but, more likely, someone at the gallery saw Hill’s work featured on the site. Here’s the first head Hill created.

io9: But just being able to sculpt a head out of Play-Doh isn’t something most people can do. I can try it, but I have no artistic ability. Tell me a little about your artistic ability and what made something like that even possible?

Hill: I guess I can just kind of like picture stuff. When I’m working on a project, before I’ve even started, I have to be able to visualize it in my head from start to finish. Otherwise, I don’t want to start, get lost halfway through, and just abandon it because I don’t know what I’m doing. So I guess it’s just like knowing to put like an eye socket in. To roll up a little ball. And you learn over time. Like putting a ball in the eye socket isn’t a complete process. But you gotta put the eyelids on. You gotta do this. And you know it’s been like 10 years. I’m still learning what works and what doesn’t.

io9: Right. Like I know when you started, your characters were a bit more block-headed in shape and now they’re a bit more realistic. So over the last 15 years, how do you think you’ve developed a style and how has it evolved?

Hill: Well, there are still times now where I’m like “Do I have a style? What do other people think my style is?” Because I’m just kind of making. I don’t know how to put that. Like when you talk about the blockheads, those I knew visually worked because it was a blockhead, a little body and then a block base. That, I knew, visually worked. So I stuck with that for maybe a little too long, where I was starting to get a little less cartoony with the style of how I was sculpting. Like early on, I didn’t put noses on my sculpts. So, eventually, I was getting more detailed but without a nose, and I was like “This doesn’t work anymore. I got started putting noses on.” Then Funko was doing blockheads by that point and I was like “Well, they have this cornered.” So I just started evolving.

io9: What kind of tools do you use?

Hill: Now I have my own little weird set of tools. I’ve tried them all. All the ones you can find out there. And I’ve eventually just settled on toothpicks. I just take toothpicks, get some sandpaper and they last a long time. I haven’t really had to replace them. Like one toothpick’s very narrow, one’s very blunt, one’s flat. I just sand them to what I need.

io9: So you have toothpicks from years ago that you bought like in a grocery store that you still use?

Hill: Yeah.

io9: That’s so crazy.

Hill: Yeah. I use a pen, X-Acto knife, and magnifying goggles have definitely helped. They’re not great but they help.

io9: That’s awesome. So if you break one, you would just kind of like sand another one back down?

Hill: Yep

io9: Wow. I love that. Okay, let’s talk about Peeks. Tell me where Peeks came from.

Hill: Oh, that I definitely remember. I was living with my parents and they had a bunch of decorative birdhouses. So just to amuse myself, every now and then, I’d pull little pranks and one I thought would be fun was to sculpt a little person and stick them behind the little circle window of a birdhouse. I couldn’t figure out how to mount it behind it but I still had to try this somehow. So I got a block of wood, put a hole in it, made the lid— it looked exactly as Peeks do now—and I said “This kind of works.” Plus you’ve got to peek through. “Peeks.” Perfect name, and I think I put like four on Etsy just to see what the reaction would be and they sold. So I was like “All right, this is money, I guess.”

Also, at the time, I was just making one-off figures for galleries. People would go “I wish I could get it,” but I don’t know how to do prints. I’m not a photographer. I can’t do pictures of my work. So Peeks were another way of getting more of my work out there. Giving more people the opportunity.

io9: Right, so these days, once a month, you sell two Peeks of which you make 18 each. How does that work? Take me through the process of making those.

Hill: So I sculpt in polymer clay, then I’d make my molds. I usually end up making like four or five molds just because it takes so long to cast them. I cast them in resin and that whole process, sculpting both Peeks, that’s like a week from start of sculpting to getting them molded and cast.

Then the next week is when I’ll start painting the first character. That’s like two days to sculpt the head which is—well, now people know because of the APs I do 19, but I do 18 in the lotteries and I keep one—but two days to paint the head, two days to paint the bodies and then Friday would be whatever I have to catch up on, paint-wise. Then the next week, next character, and at the same time, I have to find time to make the boxes which don’t take that long. I can do that in two days, but the boxes, they’re a whole separate part.

io9: So it basically takes three weeks to do a set of two Peeks.

Hill: Yeah.

io9: Wow. Tell me about the boxes. Do you have a wood supplier? Where do you get your materials?

Hill: It’s usually the same stuff over and over. I use the same resin that I’ve been using since I started, just because it works. I think it’s called like Alumilite and Smooth-On for the mold, the silicone, and I just get my wood at Home Depot. I get poplar, sticks of poplar, and I cut them down to, I think it’s 38 millimeters at this point. And that’s a whole process. I’ve always meant to document that. Cutting them down to the cube, sanding them, painting them, sanding them again, staining them, sanding them. A lot of repetition in there.

io9: While it’s going to be exciting for fans who attend the show to see all the Peeks together in one place, and buy old ones they may have missed, let’s talk about the other facts of the show too. First, the new sculptures, which all kind of look like they are in a toy box. Where did that idea come from?

Hill: I’ve been following people like Readful Things and Dano Brown, and they’re so good at it. But I don’t know how to do that with the plastic clam shells and the cardboard backers, so I was like, “How do I do my version of this?” Which is basically a wooden shadow box but with that fake toy backer. And I love doing that because it gives me such an opportunity to put in inside jokes. It’s almost like a cheat sometimes because if I’m unsure of a likeness, like I’m trying my best to nail it, I know I can take comfort in being like I can just write that name right on there. [laughs] There’s no questioning it, especially with an accessory. Some people might be like “Oh, what’s that accessory supposed to be?” You just write it on there. It’s very helpful.

Then like halfway or maybe a third of the way through working on the pieces I realized like “Oh I can have more fun with the packaging than I’m doing here and so like the Everything Everywhere All at Once piece [note: which you can see above], that was the first one where like I was like “Oh wait. Why don’t I mesh these together?” Like just try and cram two pieces from different multiverses into one. Then I had to plan out how to cut it in half, make it jagged. That kind of stuff is when it really started, “Like, oh wait. What else can I do? Can I add some lights or some sounds?”

io9: Like the Matt Damon from Team America who actually says “Matt Damon,” right?

Hill: Yeah, that was an early thought. I’ve always wanted to make that because I’ve made a couple of marionettes and I wanted to make an actual Matt Damon marionette but I don’t know how to do that hair. I feel like if you’re making a replica of a marionette that’s already one, you kind of have to do it exactly or else it looks like a knock-off. It doesn’t look right. So when I realized, “Oh, I could just make a mini marionette for the show, then I can do it in my style and kind of like nail it down and just like make everything on the piece say “Matt Damon.”

io9: I love that. It’s so good. And that new group of sculptures in particular definitely shows how your style has evolved. Like they have way more detail than the Peeks and especially your early work. Has the process to do those changed at all?

Hill: [The sculptures are] definitely more freeing. Because when I’m sculpting Peeks, I know I have to make them a very specific size. When I sculpt them, I have a little cutout that I’ll put them inside to be like “This fits in here, right? How much space do I have for the body? Where’s this gonna land with the window?” But for these, it’s all is fair. I can do whatever I want. I don’t really stick to a specific scale. Once I start sculpting the head, whatever size the head is, that’s what it going to be and I’m gonna work with it. So that’s helpful and I can do more dynamic posing because it’s hard to mold a dynamic pose the way I do the Peeks.

I’ve always wanted to do an Edward Scissorhands, but I know I can’t make a mold of those tiny scissors and crazy hair so this would be the kind of piece where I have that opportunity. I don’t have an Edward Scissorhands piece in the show, but for Doug Jones, I wanted to show him in that more kind of dynamic look, with his arms out, his legs kind of stretched, but he is a very physical actor. And for the Doug Jones piece, places like NECA and Sideshow, they’re always doing alternative heads. I was like, “There’s gotta be a character or a person that I could do I can give alternate heads to.” I knew Doug Jones would be the perfect fit because I had so many of his characters on my list.

io9: So you do have a list?

Hill: Yes. I have multiple lists. I have a separate list for Peeks that has gone back to prior stuff. I just keep adding to it. Same for characters for other projects. Any character that I think is visually compelling, even if I’m not familiar, I’ll throw them on the list to come back to. So like, the list for this show, I had multiple Doug Jones characters on it and finally I was like “Oh I could just make Doug Jones and make these alternate heads.”

io9: How long is the list of characters you want to make Peeks for?

Hill: It’s long. It’s a long list and in addition to the list I have a folder full of subfolders of reference pics. Because every month, I’ll be like “Maybe I’ll do this character,” and I’ll grab all the reference photos and put them in a folder. So when, let’s say, May 1 rolls around, I’ll just open up that folder and be like “Who looks fun to sculpt this month?” And I’ll just grab like six of them, throw them on my desktop and by the time it comes time to sculpt, I’ll hopefully have narrowed it down to two. A lot of times, I’ll narrow it down to four and it’ll be like the morning of, and I’ll be like “Uh, this one.”

io9: It sounds like you have a pretty rigid schedule.

Hill: Yeah. I’ve joked before with friends that I could tell you exactly what I’ll be doing on October 2. I can tell you what what part of the process I’ll be on and I have it in my calendar. This week is sculpt. This week is paint. This week is paint. And then I’ll mark what day I’m aiming for to put them up in the lottery and I just do that for every month so I know how to schedule around and I stick to it pretty well.

io9: Let’s talk Freeks. Bottleneck previously revealed the Jessica Rabbit turned into Greta from Gremlins and I’m debuting Porky Pig into Spider-Ham. What are these things in relation to your work and where did this idea come from?

Hill: So the idea kind of stretches back years ago, even though I didn’t have a name for them. I used to do like an April Fool’s post and one year I did a Baby Raptor, but I repainted it as Yoshi, and I put it on there just kind of like “Oh, this variant is dropping” and blah blah blah. Which, in hindsight, is kind of a mean joke. I felt bad doing it. I did it once more and was like, “Yeah I’m not doing this anymore.”

But then, as I was working on this show, I had a couple of Peeks where as I was sculpting them, I realized one character kind of looks like this other character. I’m gonna make a mental note of that and that’s kind of where it started evolving. So there are five different Freeks in the show and there are four of each, and it’s just a fun way to kind of like reimagine an old sculpt and use it as a new character.

io9: Wrapping things up here, we talked about your humble beginnings on Reddit, at Gallery 1988, the new show at Bottleneck, and over that time we’ve seen some of your work like Peeks selling for $1,000 while people camp out to buy your art. What has it been like watching and experiencing that success?

Hill: I still have a hard time believing it. Like when I see those listings on eBay where they go for a thousand bucks I’m like, “What? How did this happen?” Like, “Why?” I don’t know. It’s still surreal. Probably because I live in the middle of nowhere. I’m not really connected. I haven’t done cons. I haven’t done any of that stuff. So it’s very easy for me to just be like “Yeah, this isn’t real.” Not dismissive, but it’s hard to wrap your head around it. So I’m really looking forward to the show because it’s the first time I’ll see all these things lined up on the walls together. I don’t know how to put it. It’s very surreal.

Thank you so much to Brad Hill and the Bottleneck Gallery for the images and interview. Head to the gallery on Friday night for your first chance to buy Hill’s work and sign up for the newsletter for any online leftovers. For all future releases, including the monthly Peek release, follow Brad’s Instagram: Sir Create.

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