by Christopher Agostino
Just back from an evening of creating art on people’s faces at the annual Summer Solstice Celebration at Socrates Sculpture Park. (what a cool place: http://www.socratessculpturepark.org/about/ )
We are working hard this year to raise the level of creative adventure at our events, and this time we just told the people on line that every face would be a complete surprise, that we would turn everyone into a work of “living art.” We’ve been at Socrates for years now and we are used to the crowd and they are used to us — there are people we’ve painted there and at other NY events many times. It was a wonderful and very gratifying evening. We painted many adults, maybe as many as kids, including adults and twenty-somethings there with no kids at all. And people were enthusiastic abut being surprised, about joining the creative adventure, and that encouraged us to make new and bold choices.
People were remarkably open about what we were painting on them, and the enthusiasm of the adults was contagious to the kids. One of our artists, Christine, remarked that there was even less questioning about what people “wanted to be” than when we do some of our other creative themes such as “just tell me if you want to be ‘nice’ or ‘spooky'”. And I think it is because we used that word: “art” (“Sit down and we’ll turn you into art”). Because if we are turning them in to art, then we must be artists, and if we are artists then we are the experts about what they should look like. Facepainting Freedom! Try it, for the truth will set you free.
Here are my fotos, hot off the presses. To fit the Summer Solstice theme, I was trying to make all my faces connect to the sun, to light, to summer, to nature — and, as I have been for months now, I am continuing to work out how to take influences from modern artists into the faces I paint at any event.
"Sun Celebration" the first face I painted at the event
"Sun Spirit Mask" - the last face I painted. Using African mask influences, and also that trick that makes UV makeups glow as the sun is setting
"New York Summer Solstice" - painted on the staff person taking tickets at the entrance to the park
"Sun Goddess" - with inspiration from Andre Derain's painting "The Dance"
"Sun Goddess" - another take on this folktale concept, I painted several Sun Goddesses throught the event
"Icarus Losing His Wings" - re-imagined from the paper cut by Matisse
"Paul Klee Sun"
"Disco Dancers" - as I started to paint this young lady they announced the start of the "silent disco dance" event
Related articles
- The Kinetic Art of Face Painting – Pt.1: Sending Art off into the World (thestorybehindthefaces.com)
- First Night Hartford – Face Painting Adults and the Final Faces of 2011 (thestorybehindthefaces.com)
Your comment:
“And I think it is because we used that word: “art” (“Sit down and we’ll turn you into art”). Because if we are turning them in to art, then we must be artists, and if we are artists then we are the experts about what they should look like. Facepainting Freedom! Try it, for the truth will set you free.” is one of those truisms that does work. Turning them into art, so we must be artists . . that’s good!
My 2O year old students who have little background in art . . when they encounter a sculpture or such that baffles them, it often evokes, “What is it?” The phrase, “It is art!” leaves the door open for possibility, that perhaps they may have something to learn.
The Socrates Sculpture Park is a good art destination, for the Naguchi Sculpture Museum is across the street. http://www.noguchi.org/ For a day of it, you could first go to the Museum of the Moving Image where many historic television was created in Astoria, near Broadway and Steinway, then down to the end of Broadway where the street ends at the parks.
In their traditional, pre-commercialized role, artists were alongside the priests and shamans as gate-keepers to the mysteries, even moreso I think for the mask-makers whose art could change a human individual into a spirit to bring the mystery to life.
That experience of “touching the mystery” is greatly enhanced for a transformational facepainter (read “modern-mask-maker”) when it begins by the person you are painting agreeing to be surprised, giving over to the artist a temporary control of their identity.