Category Archives: Events

Facepainting Event: Modern Art Faces in Philly – Pt.2

The team at work at PIFAMore fotos from The Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts street fair, produced by The Kimmel Center, April 30, 2011.

To suit the theme of “Paris 1910-1920” we chose to paint faces based on the artists associated with Paris of that era, ranging from the Impressionists forward to the origins of Modern Art. And we invited the pubic to just sit down and “we will turn you into a work of art” — no requests, every face a surprise.

Dimitrea painting a Picasso inspired image

We have found that people generally like the idea of being surprised by the face we paint on them, and people this time were even more enthusiastic, excited about becoming a work of art. Excited, it seemed, about becoming something exotic and unfamiliar. Over the course of the day, several people engaged me in conversations about how different the facepainting was from what they (or their kids) were used to, and how much they enjoyed this. Our artists enjoyed themselves as well.

Monet Waterlilies

Painting like this, borrowing some of the cache of famous artists like Monet and Matisse, gives a facepainter a greater sense of freedom to be creative, in large part because the people you are painting have given you that permission and have joined you in the creative adventure.  Our team for PIFA included Britt, Dimitrea, Jennifer, Miguel and Roberta, and I couldn’t resist doing a little painting too after my storytelling shows were done.

See the previous post for fotos of the faces painted by Britt.

To learn about our company:

http://www.agostinoarts.com

here's the display we used for this event

By Jennfer, from Matisse papercut "Icarus"

from a Gauguin painting (see Britt's version in yesterday's post)

Sharks, in a modern Art/Cubist style

We also included some African and tribal images, as they were an influence on artists in Paris 1910

Roberta painting image from a Gauguin painting

By Roberta

By Britt

Picasso inspired, from Dimitrea

from Picasso - Dora Marr

from Matisse papercut: "monkey"

Dimitrea painting

One of the last faces I painted that day, in which I tried to use the colors of his shirt to work the surface of the face in imitation of the complexity Picasso brought to the surface of the canvas in some of his Cubist portraits, such as "Ambroise Vollard, 1910"

Portrait of Ambroise Vollard, Paris, Spring 1910

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Facepainting Event: Modern Art Faces in Philly – Pt.1: Britt

We had a wonderful day on Saturday at the Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts. The weather was perfect, the streets crowded with people and the event was extraordinary. While I was performing my storytelling show, we had a team of facepainters transforming the crowd with faces to suit the theme of Paris of 1910-1920 — faces based on the Modern Artists that themselves transformed what painting and sculpture looked like in that fertile, creative time in Paris. Our company was hired for the event by The Kimmel Center and the facepainting was free for the public, so the lines were long. The crowd, though, was in a great mood all day, despite the wait, and people were very receptive and excited about being turned into Modern Art.

Britt painting a face using a detail of fabric patterns from a Matisse painting

Here are a collection of faces from one of our company, Britt. Each of our artists brings their own style and interpretation to the Transformation Facepainting concept. I continue to admire Britt’s use of soft colors and the expressive  quality of her brush strokes. I feature her today because I feel her approach to this theme captured the spirit of the artists that inspired our faces for this event in a way I can learn from.

from Picass Head 1961

Picasso inspired bird face

from Monet's Women with Parasol

Monet waterlilies - an idea that inspired several faces

Monet's painting of a sunset in Venice

Monet inspired Paris scene - Eiffel Tower

Another of Britt's take on Monet-esque Eiffel Tower

Monet's garden, with footbridge

from a Max Ernst painting

from one of Matisse's gold fish paintings, again Britt used a detail of a famous painting to craft the face design

from Paul Klee painting

from a Gauguin painting

from an Andre Derain painting: "The Dance"

taking other elements from an Andre Derain painting: "The Dance"

Thank you, Britt, for such an expressive contribution to our collective art at PIFA.

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Penguins at the Bronx Zoo Saturday Morning

Each year the Bronx Zoo hosts a Run for the Wild to raise awareness and funds for a specific conservation issue. This year it’s a run for penguins, this Saturday morning, April 30, 7:00 – 9:30 am. Go to the zoo site for details: http://www.bronxzoo.com/

We’ll have five artists there turning the runners, their families and guests into penguins, in every way we can think of. Even in a single animal theme like this we strive for creativity variety.

Part of my job as “artistic director” of a company of talented artists is to give them a head start on taking a creative approach to a new theme like this by doing some new designs to expand the repertoire. Penguins make for some great faces, because you can easily do a simplified but recognizable penguin image that then allows you to put multiple penguins on a face, and to put them into scenes and to give them personality.

a couple of the new sketches I did for this event

I tried out one of these designs at an event in March.

Last year’s run was for tigers. You can see the faces I did for that one here: