Marc Sokpolie

Not a lot of people have their own hand gesture. I’m talking about famous people, and a hand gesture that’s known all over the world. I think Churchill has the peace sign with two fingers in a ‘v’ shape, Jay-Z has the diamond sign with two hands. When you’re addressing large masses of people on- the-daily, it sure helps to have such a personal handsign.

One of my favorites is George Clinton’s P-Funk sign. I like casting sculptures and making a limited run of copies, and with Churchill gone I just had to go and make a cast of George’s hand. I bought two pounds of fast setting silicone, rubber gloves, and off we went, because George had a show in Purmerend, Holland that night, and my friend (once Funkadelic backing vocalist and TrackAddicts lead vocalist) Ten brought me in contact with George.

After the show we talked to him in his hotel room and I explained my plan. George is an adventurous person and he knew about the famous plastercasters from Jimi hendrix’ mythology (google that some other time) I showed him the silicone packaging, from a US manufacturer, medical grade and 100% safe, and he agreed with a grin on his face.

So I mixed the two parts of the silicone and brushed it on his right hand doing the famous ‘funksign’ gesture. After about half an hour of trying to keep George from getting bored (He didn’t, he just started singing and everyone sang along)  I peeled the silicone off, like a glove, threw it in my bag and after a little impromptu hotel party with Belita Woods, Mike ‘Clip’ Payne and more P-Funk allstars Ten, I and my cousin Reggie, who financially funded the whole enterprise, went back home.

In the following weeks I made a polyurethane copy and it was incredible… all the pores, ridges, wrinkles, torn nails and creases are there, on the hand that shaped P-funk all these years and iconized the P-Funk gesture. It was so detailed I had to sand down the fingers to make sure no one could do funny stuff with Georges fingerprints.  I think this is as close you can get to George– if you’re not on the guestlist !

I made a production mold with a nice baseplate, with an embossed logo and a spot to etch a serial number. Also I made a separate mold for the index finger, because a new plan arose: what if we put a USB stick in the finger, and George could put a music album on the stick?

This was too good to be true. In short, it came with a lot of legal problems. It was a lot of work to produce even one hand, with a usb stick in the finger, spraypainted and ready for mailorder. My good friend Fabian Dech helped me to get the ball rolling, he set up the postal contracts and the webshop, website, packaging, insurance, accounting, facebook campaigning and everything. We sold 39 copies worldwide. Japan, Australia, America, Germany, France, UK. Some really famous gadget sites found our hand the ultimate gift for any P-Funk fan. Still this was not enough to break even…

Right now the project is on ice. The people who bought one could be lucky, I think the hands will be worth much more than the original retail price. There is a new plan in the works though. A simpler version, easier to produce, lighter, without the separate index finger. George will come around this year and I’ll see if we can jumpstart the project a second time, ok?

I made George a scepter with one of the hands on top.

I wonder if he still has it. Probably gets enough presents from his fans to fill a warehouse.