Next Stop For The Simpsons: Forest Hills

The Simpson are coming! The Simpsons are coming!

Bart, Homer, Lisa, Krusty the Clown, Chief Wiggum and even Disco Stu will appear at Kyle McCoy's Forest Hills home this Saturday, April 2, when the artist plans to unveil "Project Springfield" at about 7 p.m.

Named after the hit TV show's fictional hometown, the undertaking consists of 3D Pixel Art creations of 166 characters, 40 city blocks and 54 locations, including the power plant where Homer works/sleeps, the Kwik-E-Mart convenience store owned by the endearingly-accented Apu Nahasapeemapetilon and Springfield Elementary School, where Bart famously writes weekly messages on the chalkboard. 

All this in a multi-layer, three-dimensional landscape that's more than 10 feet high and 4 feet wide.

"I wanted to do some kind of a pop culture piece," explained McCoy, an Indiana native who teaches at the Rhinelander Children's Center in Manhattan. "I don't know what has affected me more than The Simpsons."

It took two years to construct Project Springfield, as McCoy only used multi-color, plastic Perler beads, which he arranged in his figurines. He then fused the beads together by lightly melting them with heat from an iron.

Some objets d'art, such as Moe's Tavern, the Aztec Theater and Krusty Burger, took roughly three hours to make. But the 25-year-old McCoy, who stills remembers watching his first episode at age 5, isn't complaining.

"It's relaxing," he says. "We are creating the entire town of Springfield one pixel at a time."

The unveiling will take place during a private party at McCoy's home near Yellowstone Boulevard. However, he has a website — www.midnight-buffet.com — where he will post photos and videos of the event right after everything unfolds.

A more public exhibition is definitely a possibility.

"I'm a big Simpsons fan," McCoy says. "For its first eight seasons, it was the best thing on television. It's rare for a television show to have eight seasons, much less eight seasons of gold."