Earl is a collaborative duo consisting of Chris and his wife, Andrea Buckvold.
The television personality Stephen Colbert actively cultivated a relationship with the contemporary artworld on The Colbert Report. For instance, he had his portrait painted every year; one version of this portrait was hung in the National Portrait Gallery, and another was altered by the acclaimed artists Andres Serrano and Shepard Fairey, and sold by the prominent auction house of Simon de Pury. In 2011, Colbert put out a request to all of his fans, asking for new portraits based on his previous portrait. He posted all the submissions on his website and featured selected portraits on the set of the show.
This is Earl’s portrait of Colbert. It is a word search where all the words are from “The WØRD,” a regular feature on his show. It is colored in patriotic red, white, and blue, with the white letters filling in the space occupied by his silhouette in his original portrait (seen below). Unfortunately, immediately after Earl submitted the image to Colbert’s site, he suspended the project, and it was never actually posted.
The image on the left is Earl’s WØRD Search, and the image on the right is Colbert’s original portrait.
Chris Wildrick 