Gallery ML – Collective Body Art Gallery – Kickstarter for their Big, New Space!

Gallery ML, the fine art body painting gallery in Philadelphia, is expanding. They have acquired a much larger new space (7,000 square feet!) and will have a Grand Opening Event in their new home on April 6, featuring the current bodypainting world champions Scott Fray and Madelyn Greco of Living Brush, plus a score of guest artists.  Gallery ML has initiated a Kickstarter fundraising campaign to cover the costs of converting the space into an art gallery, and everyone who donates will receive something for their support: limited edition show posters, signed prints, postcards, t-shirts, and canvas printing for their own images (one of the wonderful things about Gallery ML is that they offer printing services for body painters).

Please consider helping their Kickstarter campaign:

 http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/galleryml/the-worlds-first-collective-body-art-gallery

And check out their video to learn about the Gallery and their plans for the new space:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/galleryml/the-worlds-first-collective-body-art-gallery/widget/video.html

Storytelling in Japanese Art — Onmyoji and Raiko: Super Heroes Team-Up vs. More Japanese Demons

The Drunken Demon

by Christopher Agostino

see also: The Eye of the Demon — a StoryFaces Performance to learn about the stage presentation I do based on the legends of the samurai and the demons that they fight

I ran into a couple of old friends at the Metropolitan Museum of Art yesterday in the exhibit Storytelling in Japanese Art. In an “emaki” (handscroll) illustrating the story of “The Drunken Demon” I found the hero samurai Raiko (who I know from a folktale I tell of his battle with the Goblin Spider) and Abe no Seimei (my favorite Onmyoji, or yin/yang magician)—both in the same story like a Spiderman/Dr. Strange crossover in an issue of Marvel Team-Up.

Marvel Team-Up — Twice as Many Pages! Twice as Many Thrills!

Emaki are like the original comic books or animated movies, telling a story through text and sequential illustrations. A scroll might be 30′ long, and to read it you would look at about two feet at a time, unrolling it with your left hand while simultaneously rolling it up again with your right. “The Drunken Demon” version in the exhibit was told over three scrolls from the Edo period by Kaiho Yuchiku (1654-1728). A boyish demon becomes terrible when drunk, stealing all the beautiful women. When he captures the daughter of an aristocrat, Abe no Seimei uses his powers to find where the girl is held, and the Emperor orders Raiko and his warrior companions to rescue the girl—which they do with the help of three gods disguised as men, a tree that grows across a chasm to become a bridge, some poisoned saki and a golden helmet. In the climactic illustrations, after a wild feast featuring human sashimi, the sleeping demon is depicted as filling an entire room (described in the text as 10′ tall, but illustrated as if 30′ tall) before Raiko cuts his head off, blood spraying out in a fine mist just like in the modern samurai movies like “The Warrior’s Way” (a fun one I watched last night). Continue reading

The Kinetic Art of Face Painting — Pt.1: Sending Art off into the World

by Christopher Agostino

 This is the distinctive difference of painting faces as an art, isn’t it, that the art we create moves and is alive—and, once painted, the art we create has a life of its own. Unlike a Calder mobile or other kinetic sculptures, the work of art we create is on an independent, conscious life form who then puts the art into motion following their own determinations. Once painted, we have no control over the art we have created and it just goes off into the world to have its own adventure. Face painting is a kinetic art, an art that moves, with a will of its own.

The thought that my art goes on to its own adventures is a significant part of what keeps face painting exciting for me. As the commercial opportunities of artistic body painting begin to expand in the U.S. I have continued to focus primarily on painting faces because of the greater numbers of people it gives me a chance to transform. A painted body has quite an impact, but not as great, I think, as the dozens or hundreds of faces we can paint at a an event—and, of course, we are giving so many more people the experience being art, kinetic art, as they move through the event. I particularly appreciate painting like this at large public events, and have constructed my Transformations Facepainting company with this type of event in mind, because it affords the greatest opportunity to send a multitude of faces off into the world, leading to the surprising discoveries by passersby of painted people in everyday settings  (like the woman in the previous post telling me of looking for our faces throughout the village of Southampton), and remarkable juxtapositions like in my favorite “face in the Crowd” photo of the man in a face from Papua New Guinea eating potato chips on the roof of the Port Authority Bus Terminal with New York City in the background

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Alice and John at his reception

This past Sunday I was able to send one piece of my day’s kinetic art on a mission. I was painting at the Darwin Dayfestivities of the Long Island Ethical Humanist Society. As a woman sat down to be painted she asked for something appropriate to going to an art gallery, where she was heading to next, and after a few questions we realized  she was going to the opening reception of an exhibit by my friend and mentor, John Fink.

In Professor Fink's class I worked with the same themes that inspire my face and body designs

I had started the day disappointed that my gig prevented me from attending his reception and here came a serendipitous opportunity to be there at least in spirit. Alice was enthusiastic about being a human greeting card and I did a design based on cave paintings, like the work I had been doing in the last ceramics class I took with Professor Fink. Check at John Fink’s very playful sculptures, ceramics and constructions: www.johnfinkart.com

To learn more about our programs and performances:  http://www.agostinoarts.com

When I first started using cultural sources for face designs I recognized that they stand out in modern settings in a way that draws the attention of spectators and enhances the effectiveness of the transformation

Painting adults also draws more attention to the art, because it is more surprising to see a painted adult than to see a painted child

Another way in which a painted face is a kinetic art, as the movement of the face brings the design itself to life...more on this in a future post