Boston Common - Niche Media - A side of Boston that's anything but common.
Issue link: http://digital.greengale.com/i/692580
Peter Tunney is living in the present. His famed Grattitude, The Time Is Always Now, and Enough Is Possible paintings hang around the world. "The overarching theme is that I hate that we're getting older, I hate that time is slipping by," he says. "I really love being here." Tunney's obsession with time is what makes his lat- est project, Giant Polaroids, so interesting. It involves a large Polaroid camera—one of only five made, manu- factured in the late '70s and used by Andy Warhol and Chuck Close—that produces huge 20-by-24-inch pho- tos. But film for the camera is running out. The 55-year-old artist takes pictures of "whatever comes into my mind that day" and has partnered with the estate of photographer Bert Stern to shoot Stern's pho- tos of Marilyn Monroe, the last taken before she died. "You're like nose to nose with Marilyn Monroe telling you, 'Come and get me, baby,'" he says of the process. Of course, long after all the film for the giant camera is gone, Tunney's work will still be making its mark. As part of Ocean Drive's Art of the City initiative, he has agreed to donate a work to benefit Artists for Peace and Justice (apjnow.org), a nonprofit that addresses issues of poverty around the world. "If we ran out [of film] tomorrow, then c'est la vie," he says. "It would just make me treasure these pictures more, and would make me think I should have done more Marilyns." Tunney's studio is located at 220 NW 26th St., Miami, 646-245-7904; petertunney.com P E T E R T U N N E Y WITH HIS GIANT POLAROIDS COLLECTION, THE ARTIST, PHILANTHROPIST, AND ENTREPRENEUR IS CAPTURING MOMENTS AND CREATING TREASURE. BY JON WARECH MIAMI What Peter Tunney (ABOVE RIGHT, art- directing Mr. Brainwash at a Giant Polaroids shoot) calls "stuff that I treasure"—from Cap'n Crunch boxes to bleached-out beer cans to a childhood Lassie book—has a way of becoming part of his art, which may explain how his paint-smudged jeans wound up in the piece Cailin Double Exposed in My Jeans (2015) on Ocean Drive's cover (LEFT). BACKGROUND: A detail from Brillo (2016). BOSTONCOMMON-MAGAZINE.COM 89