This particular portrait, entitled "How To Fuck Like A Pornstar", is of the pornstar Jenna Jameson. She is without doubt the most admired and successful porn star in history, and I chose to make the portrait out of 678 condoms adhered to a canvas. I feel the condoms fit for many reasons. The most obvious is the reference to sex, but there is also a more hidden philosophy to them.... 
Sex is the means by which humans reproduce, so you might say that the point of sex is reproduction. (I would agree, but I would also argue that it is not the ONLY point...but rather one of many.) A condom is specifically designed to prevent pregnancy (and STDs), and in using them, I feel it expresses how pornography using sex for entertainment/self indulgence, rather than reproduction. Although most of the condoms in this piece are straight out of the wrapper, there are 20 or so that I used over the 2 or 3 months it took to create the piece. 
I had three major influences when doing this piece. Obviously chuck close is a major influence; but I also tried to arrange the condoms in such a way that the viewer is reminded of Vincent Van Gogh's energetic, flowing brush strokes. I also referenced Andy Warhol's portraits of Marilyn Monroe when doing this piece. Like Warhol, I used minimal shading in the piece,flattening the image in order to remove the individual from the image, stripping her of her identity, leaving the viewer with only her facade--the sexual object she becomes in her works.I did this to make the viewer see only one side of her, the side of her that made her famous...lust. 
In reality, she has many sides. Jenna is an incredibly intelligent, ambitious woman. After all, pornography is a business in which the vast majority of employees are used, exploited, and have short-lived careers. She, despite the standard outcome, entered the business at the same level as everyone else, and with-in a decade had become the most famous, most successful figure it has ever known.She is the Wayne Gretzky of Adult Entertainment, the Princess of Pornography, and that is something she should get a lot more respect and recognition for.