To go big, artist Billy Pappas went small. So small that he learned to fit strokes of a pencil onto a space the size of the period ending this sentence.

In 1994, he rented an attic room near his parents' house in suburban Baltimore. For eight years and five months, the then 30-something artist painstakingly re-creates photographer Richard Avedon's famous portrait of Marilyn Monroe.

Painstakingly -- except that word doesn't begin to describe Pappas' method. Using pencil, paper and magnifying glasses wrapped to his forehead, Pappas watches the microscopic tip of his pencil at 20 times its actual size as his hand recast the depth, line and shadow of Monroe's every feature onto canvas. Her lips, teeth and eyes became epic journeys into new dimensions of detail where the smallest pencil movement divides mind-blowing, cumulative effect from the mud of mediocrity. Her hair alone cost the artist two years' work.

By the time you finish watching Salt Lake City documentary film director Julie Checkoway's "Waiting For Hockney," chances are good you'll sit up from your living room sofa not just entertained, but filled with the sharp sensation of having shared in someone else's grand gesture, no matter how foolhardy.

Through the course of the project, viewers see Pappas' mother, Cookie, worry herself sick. Pappas' longtime friends muse over his motivations. And we scratch our heads in vexation and admiration watching Pappas, now 42, invest years of his life in a bid to present his finished work to famed British pop artist David Hockney.

As he walks through the doors of his mentor's Los Angeles estate for final judgment on his work, as viewers we hold our collective breath, wondering what will become of Pappas' pilgrimage in the name of art.

Through it all, Pappas himself articulates his passion, sometimes lade in esoteric artistic terms, other times refined to near-perfect phrases. "Let's let everything go to hell except excellence," he says. "Excellence at any cost."

Much like Philippe Petit's tight-wire walk across New York City's Twin Towers in 1974, Pappas seems aware of the gambit he's making. "When you make a choice, you rule out infinity," he says.

Checkoway, a former arts reporter for The Tribun , first heard of Pappas through Gary Vikan, director of the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore. She left a tenured position as director of the creative writing program at the University of Texas in Houston to raise a family, and was writing stories for National Public Radio when she met Pappas in 2002, when he was adding finishing touches to "Marilyn."

"I knew it was a good story, and a really interesting story," Checkoway said. "But I knew nothing about film.

Checkoway's brother, Neal, helped persuade her that Pappas' story was meant for a documentary, while her husband, Lee Thomsen, encouraged Checkoway to follow the story. Geralyn Dreyfous, founder and executive director of the Salt Lake City Film Center, helped raise funds for the film's budget, which came in at under $1 million.

But it is Pappas' obsessive zeal that anchors the story. Finished in 2008, "Waiting For Hockney" made the cut at 15 national film festivals, including Tribeca, and recently won the Eleanor Roosevelt award for originality at the 5th Annual Utopia Film Festival in Maryland. It screens Nov. 23 and 24 on the Sundance Channel.

Sorting through her protagonist's motives, Checkoway focussed on Pappas' most universal quality: His slow race for artistic renown.

"Each of us has an immortality project, whether it's raising our children or some other project that makes us live heroically or grandly beyond the forces of death," Checkoway said. "I've never seen anyone walk away neutral about Billy. They seem to either love or hate him. That means it [the film] should have a good shelf-life."

For Dianna Barrett, president of the Fledgling Fund in New York City that helped fund the film, Checkoway's narrative speaks to the care people must take in accepting judgment.

"It goes way beyond a compulsive-obsessive person painting Marilyn Monroe," Barrett said. "Each and every one of us has our Hockney. Everyone in every profession has someone whose opinion they cherish above all others. I once told Julie, 'We should have bumper-stickers for this movie asking 'Who is your Hockney?' "

bfulton@sltrib.com