Bodypaint Human Motorcycles
1 Concept, 3 Human Motorcycles. This "making of " video was shot over the course of 3 days and captures the process of bringing human motorcycles to life for the Progressive International Motorcycle Shows ad campaign. Trina Merry, a professional body paint artist, and her team worked around the clock transforming their human canvases into a sport bike, dirt bike, and cruiser.
Concept: i.d.e.a. http://www.theideabrand.com
Lead Body Paint Artist - Trina Merry
Photographer - Juan Moreno
Videographer and Video Editor - Darryl Badong
Music by: Jay Ra Dieu
The Automotive Humans: Pushing the Limits of Professional Body Painting
As body painting artists in NYC go, Trina Merry is not one to shy away from a challenge. One of her most interesting and viral pieces, The Human Motorcycle Project, explores the human body as a sculpture, using every curve, shape and body part to build human motorcycles. The optical illusions, created from nothing but human models and her professional body painting skills, are an alluring and empowering vision of motorcycle culture as a distinctly human experience.
The project began in collaboration with the Progressive International Motorcycle Show, when Ryan Berman who was working on the project, found Trina. The show was looking for something modern, contemporary and racy that could come on tour with the event and Trina’s experience as a body painting artist in NYC brought the project to life instantly.
“Making a sculpture come to life, it’s about coming together to express a subculture through the language of body paint”
Ryan’s initial idea was to create a body painted outfit that matched the motorcycle, focusing on women and encouraging them to attend the show. Trina built on the concept and made it something more powerful, suggesting that the motorcycle be built out of women as live models as a display of empowerment.
This put Trina’s professional body painting skills to the test as she took the project head-on, delving into the motocross world and its culture. Culture has always been at the forefront of Trina’s process of body painting, exploring different connections and creating art that’s dynamically alive. She also began a ‘shaping session’ with friends in order to see how bodies could fit together to form a motorcycle.
“Not many artists use real human bodies as a source of structural art, but I do and I love it!”
Moving the models into position, Trina was able to replicate the shape of motorcycles including a sports bike, dirt bike and a cruiser. It was then all down to her ability as an artist to blur the models as they took on their form as a motorcycle. Her images combine the mystique of the human body with the sheer power of the motorbike. The disparity between the two soon becomes blurred as the posing models’ tensed muscles take on a new shape. The resulting image is a display of sheer power on two levels - the raw power or the machine and the amazing power of the human bodies behind the image.
An important part of the project for Trina was having Erin Bates on board as one of the body painting models. Sports reporter and host of Progressive International Motorcycle Show Erin put herself forward to be part of the artwork, bringing with her a key knowledge of the motocross world. As a rider herself, Erin was able to manipulate her body in new ways to create a realistic image, channelling Trina’s image as her body paint designs began to take form. This only added to Trina’s multi-layered art form, by creating greater context to her art as the culture to which it belongs was given yet another heartbeat. The models posed for periods of five to six minutes for up to eighteen hours as Trina put her professional body painting skills to the test and made human bodies into realistic automotive structures.
“It’s really important to know how does a body bend... what are their physical attributes that make them so key to that engine or that engine or that handlebar? Everybody is so important in their shapes that are natural to them.”
Her images make clever use of the human bodies hiding underneath the paint. The disparity between the two soon becomes blurred as the posing models’ tensed muscles lend the resulting image their raw power of the image and their bodies. The beauty of this art is the micro and macro image that’s created - at first, it’s the bold image of the motorcycle but up closer inspection you see the incredible bodies mirroring the very human experience of motorcycle riding and attending the show.
Following this, Trina continued her motorcycle body paint designs and female empowerment art on America’s Got Talent. The bike was crafted with glow in the dark neon pink paint, creating a Kawasaki style sport bike that was feminine and powerful - the rider was Kerstin Tuning, one of the motorcycle models from the previous project.
Later, the project was taken to new depths when Nippon TV featured Trina on Japanese quiz show Itte Q. Working closely with Ducati, the artist painted a custom made red Ducati as the models contorted themselves to replicate the motorbike, all the while a Japanese celebrity who was to be part of the model, had to guess what was being made.
Undoubtedly one of the most groundbreaking body painting artists in NYC, Trina continues to break new boundaries with her thought-provoking and captivating artwork. You can keep up to date with Trina’s latest projects by following her on Instagram @trinamerryart and get involved with the conversation.