Artist David Sena Makes Drawings Using Fireworks [Video]

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Texas native, David Sena, is a celebrated tattoo artist in NYC. Sena is the owner of Senaspace--a tattoo parlor/gallery in lower Manhattan which houses his latest works.

When he's not wielding a needle, he's wielding explosives.

Cool Hunting Video: David Sena from Cool Hunting on Vimeo.

Sena uses live fireworks to create large scale drawings. Colored smoke bombs and jumping jacks are his tools of choice. Equipped with a respirator and an attraction for danger, he forms a complex pattern of scorch marks and holes on paper.

Sometimes he manipulates the flames, while other times he lets them have free reign. For Sena, part of the excitement of working this way is the sheer unpredictability; he cannot foresee exactly how a given piece will turn out and, while he is able to exert some control over the fireworks, he is still, in many regards, at their mercy.

As with tattooing, the creative process itself is just as significant as the finished piece.

"These techniques are rooted in one of humankind's earliest technologies: fire, and as such they speak to something elemental in the human condition," says Sena.

"Inspired by cosmology and the interconnection between terrestrial and celestial fires, my drawings become a record of their creation, a map pointing to the reason for human existence, or rather the outer limits, the infinite, the space not yet grasped."

It is the inherent motion in Sena's drawings that makes them so effective; the spiraling trails of smoke seem to bloom from the otherwise blank pages, imbuing the work with an incredible energy and atmosphere, like clusters of galaxies hovering in space. With their masses of impenetrable darkness, interspersed by tiny halos of light, they are both foreboding and strangely beautiful.

In more recent works, Sena has experimented with sculpture, playing with light and depth as he incorporates lamps and suspended layers into his art.