Vicious Circles

Michelangelo took four years to complete his Sistine Chapel ceiling. Convicted forger A. Schiller supposedly went blind etching The Lord’s Prayer on the head of a gold pin. Artist Henry Leo Schoebel may not be crazy enough to undertake either task, but his paintings’ mathematically plotted circles and lines are proof of his artistic dedication.

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“It’s insane,” Schoebel admits of one of the pieces featured in his “Henry Leo Schoebel: New Work” exhibit. “I glued on over 16,000 crystal rhinestones!” On a recent visit, one gallery patron insisted that the circles were stickers, as there’s no other way the dots could be that precise. Schoebel says that while he uses mechanical tools to create his polyurethane-coated abstract works, the circles are hand-painted – though he’s reluctant to reveal more to the uninitiated. “Ironically, on some level, I want to keep the underlying processes secret,” the painter-slash-ASU professor tells New Times. “A really good painting always disguises the way it is painted.”