Meet the Liverpool artist using Rubik's Cubes to create unique sculptures

Liverpool artist Fai McCabe is using one of the world’s most famous puzzles, the brain-teasing Rubik’s Cube, to create unique artworks.

Fai, from West Derby, hand-twists each individual mini Rubik’s Cube to produce colourful likenesses from celebrity icons like Taylor Swift and Marilyn Monroe to landmarks such as the Liver Building.

She’s even done a live installation in New York’s Times Square, replicating US President Donald Trump.

This August, Fai will be displaying some of her sculptures – and making her biggest to date – at a new exhibition at the Quirky Quarter on Duke Street.

Entitled Think Again, the collaboration with 3D print artist Anthonite will take a very different look at art history, reimagining classics if they were taken over by Rubik’s Cubes.

The pieces will be on show at the illusion gallery’s newest space and in Quirky Quarter’s window where Fai plans to work live on her large-scale depiction of The Beatles and the city skyline.

For 24-year-old Fai, it’s an opportunity to showcase the distinctive style she first discovered three years ago after buying a job lot of Rubik’s Cubes on impulse.

She explains: “I’ve always been interested in art, I did a fine art foundation diploma at Liverpool City College, then I started working in oil paint. I was doing a lot of traditional photo realism, but it just wasn’t fulfilling what I wanted to do.

“As a child I was obsessed with puzzles, and I’m a chess tutor as well, so I love anything pattern related. Rubik’s Cube is quite a niche community and a lot of people are speed cubers, seeing who can do it fastest. To me, once I could solve it, I found it a bit boring just trying to solve it quicker, so I started thinking how I could combine it with my artistic side.

“Spontaneously I ordered 300 full-sized Rubik’s Cubes and did my first piece which was John Lennon.

“It was actually much easier than I thought it was going to be, because it just fits the way my brain works – I found the repetition quite therapeutic.

“I was hoping to do something that represented Liverpool and maybe sell it to a bar, but then I realised people liked what I was doing, so I stuck with it and it’s evolved from there.”

One of the first issues Fai addressed was the scale of her installations – the John Lennon one, because it was made using full-sized cubes, was just far too big to attract a buyer.

“It was huge, and pretty weighty, so nobody had the space for it. After that I found a supplier in the US who gets me small cubes in bulk and now I use the original cubes for other public space pieces.

“I take that big set around with me and there’s something quite nice about the same set being recycled and used for so many different people, including Jurgen Klopp and Taylor Swift.

“For the Quirky Quarter show, Mona Lisa’s going to be made with the same set that I first used for Lennon.”

Fai’s version of the classic Girl With A Pearl Earring won a contemporary art show in Milan and she’s had work shown in galleries around the world.

“The live installation I did in Times Square around the time of the election was called Trump v Tupac, which was a whole political conversation around who people would vote for in a hypothetical situation.

“I just packed my bag and chucked in a load of Rubik’s Cubes but then I got stopped at the airport because I have to drill the frames to keep them still and I hadn’t thought about how it looked, having a little pink electric drill in my luggage!”

Fai hopes Think Again, which runs from August 1-31, will get all ages talking and looking at art in a different way.

“We want it to be young person friendly, so somewhere local families who want to do something a bit different over summer will come and also visitors to the city.

“Everyone’s tried a Rubik’s Cube at some point in their life, so hopefully it pushes the boundaries of what art means in a way everyone can relate to.”