Larry King’s face crops up in field Artist creates likeness in Madison

MADISON – Larry King’s familiar image – suspenders and all – has cropped up on a Maine hayfield.

Conceptual artist Daniel Bozhkov created a 300-by-250-foot likeness of the TV interviewer using a 3-by-6-foot piece of quarter-inch plywood to flatten the mixture of timothy and milkweed growing in an isolated field in central Maine.

Bozhkov, an instructor at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, calls the eerily precise likeness of the CNN talk show host “Learn How to Fly over a Very Large Larry.”

Bozhkov and fellow artist Kathryn Chan spent the past three weeks on the portrait, sometimes working 10 hours a day and rising at 4 a.m. to avoid the midday sun.

They used strings, sticks and boards to meticulously plot out King’s features before pushing down the vegetation to form the image.

Bozhkov, a native of Bulgaria, said he got the idea while traveling.

“I travel quite a bit around the world and wherever you go, [Larry King] is there in everybody’s living room,” he said. Bozhkov first considered creating the work in an empty parking lot next to a Skowhegan mall, but decided to do it in a more natural setting instead.

“This is the left suspender here,” Bozhkov said as he stood amid the giant portrait in the field that is surrounded by poplars and maple trees and accessible only by foot.

Positioning King’s eye and the angle of his mouth just right was critical to making the face recognizable, the artist said.

“To achieve that precision on a large scale was one of the challenges,” said Bozhkov, noting he’s seen an increase in the number of small planes flying over the site since the portrait appeared.

Bozhkov said the landowner gave his permission to make the image on the condition that the artist not cut the hay.