David Meanix has long had a love for three things in life: photography, sculpture, and dance. At SF State, he found a way to combine his love into one art form known as photo sculpture.

Meanix, 37, who graduated from SF State in 1995 with a degree in Inter-Arts, decided to pursue photo sculpture out of frustration with his dance photos. He said photo sculpture is a four-hour process of photographing small parts of a subject’s face, printing the photos, ripping them up and then creating a paper-mache mold of the subject’s face from the shreds to create something resembling a mask.

Meanix has been doing photo sculpture artwork since 1995.

“I was always hugely inspired by dance, but the dance photos I was taking felt like I was flattening something into 2-D when it needed to be experienced in 3-D,” Meanix said. “I was taking a khatak dance class and ceramics at SF State at the time, and my passion and respect for them fused with my love for photography and my concept for photo sculpture was born.”

In 2004, Meanix’s photo sculpture was used in an episode of HBO’s “Six Feet Under,” in which the character of Claire is given the opportunity to exhibit some of her artwork at a gallery.

After Meanix’s work was chosen to be portrayed as Claire’s artwork on the show, Meanix said he was given the opportunity to meet the cast and do the photo sculpture process on the main characters of the show, including Rachel Griffiths, Peter Krause, Michael C. Hall and Frances Conroy.

“Everyone was very cool and laid back, from start to finish, throughout the whole period,” Meanix said.

One of Meanix’s friends, Rex Bruce, who received a master of fine arts degree in Inter-Arts from SF State, said Meanix contacted HBO about using some of his photo-sculpture work in their show. Bruce said the process was a long haul of back-and-forth negotiations.

“That was a dream come true, literally. I got goose-bumps at the thought of having them use my work to begin with because I am a huge ‘Six Feet Under’ fan,” Meanix said. “It is surreally satisfying to see my work coexisting within their alternate realm.”

Bruce said Meanix is very fun, unpretentious, smart and committed to his work, which paid off when he got his work on “Six Feet Under.” Bruce also went to the premiere of the airing of the “Six Feet Under” episode, and said there was a great mixture of movie and art people there.

“His work is unique and not like what most others are doing,” said Jim Davis, 66, an SF State art professor and Meanix’s former adviser. Davis also explained that in the Inter-Arts Center program, the art produced by students is not of any particular art form.

“IAC encouraged students to not use single, traditional forms, but, rather, to synthesize two or more forms of expression into an entirely new form of expression,” Davis said. “This might involve integrating sound with performance, or writing with visual images.”

Meanix does photo sculpture combining photography and sculpture into one art form. Whereas he used to photograph people, he now photographs objects as well. He said he photo-sculpted one of his first cameras he ever shot with, and is currently photo sculpting an old seesaw.

“I had my handy friend Tyler reproduce a duplicate of the old, weathered seesaw,” Meanix said. “I am photographing sections of the original, tearing out pieces of the photos and photo sculpturing the pieces on to the replica. People often don't quite comprehend it even when it is in front of them, kind of like life a lot of the time.”

Meanix explained that after he got mixed up in all the different disciplines of ceramics, dance and computer arts, he decided to put his photo sculpture idea to the test and submit it as his senior project, which was a photo sculpture of his boyfriend at the time.

“I chose him most of all because he was very special to me. I trusted him to be patient with me if it took a while or didn't work at first,” Meanix said. “It worked great and helped me complete my vision and Inter-Arts senior project.”

He said he was really pensive about the project, more from fear of success than failure. When he finally finished it, he loved the results.

Meanix came to San Francisco in 1991, after growing up outside Amish country in Pennsylvania and attending Penn State. He said SF State was the place where he could really branch out into the art world and explore everything it had to offer him.

“It was an amazing opportunity for me to experiment with a bunch of different genres and different art classes,” said Meanix. “From computer arts to video installations, to ceramics and with flavor compared to what I saw as foreboding, bland Penn State.”

Meanix has completed two solo shows and he is preparing for his third show, which will take place at Bert Green Fine Art in Los Angeles. He will also be attending the Bridge Art Fair in Miami, Fla. next month

“I love doing photo sculpture,” Meanix said. “I think what I like most is how I see each deceivingly separate photo connect with the others to form a whole entity of connections. It never ceases to excite me how we are all pieces of a larger picture.”