Playing herself in the season finale of HBO's hugely popular Six Feet Under, Nicole Richie (Paris Hilton's simple minded sidekick) gushes over David Meanix's work: "I totally get it. It reminds me of paper dolls and bad relationships, and lies people tell about stupid things." Although Meanix himself was not cast in the show, his artwork landed a walk-on role as the inspired photography that catapults Claire Fisher, the show's coke sniffing art student, onto the highbrow gallery scene. But despite a groundswell of praise from the legions of devout Six Feet fans, it appears that Ms Richie was merely reading scripted lines, as she reportedly declined to purchase a single piece from the real-life maker. Born in suburban Philadelphia, the eighth of nine children, David Meanix is used to fighting for attention and choosing his battles carefully. So it's no surprise that he can allow his work to bask in the glow of television fame, as he quietly watches from home. While insisting that he prefers we look at the artwork and decide on our own what it's about, he does volunteer some insight into his emotional process. "Growing up, I was always trying to project an image of the good kid. Much of my work is about overcoming the fear of revealing my true self," he admits. Meanix resists portraying himself as an "educated, intellectual artist," and refers to his alma mater, San Francisco State, as an undistingued art school. Instead, he asserts that he was mostly home schooled. "My stuff is almost amateur," he proclaims, "and I like it that way." To create the work, Meanix begins by photographing every plane of his subject, inch-by-inch. Next, he makes actual size prints of each captured frame. After copying the photos onto paper, he tears them and then covers the subject with the ripped up images, aligning each bit with remarkable precision. Finally, he shoots the finished sculpture in a contrived setting to complete the photographic tableau. On close inspection the reassembled components of these eerie masks might recall the scaly hide of a snake—another of the artist's childhood fascinations. Perhaps in time his subjects will shed their latest skin to reveal, as the philosophical Richie suggests, whatever truth lies just beneath.

"Float" (C-print, 2002)