Bronx Zoo Facepainting – Opening Day – Rebirth

Apr9

What a beautiful day it was to be at the zoo. Finally it feels like Spring is here, with warm enough weather to open our Transformation Facepainting concession, starting our 18th season of turning people into animals at the Bronx Zoo. After this tough winter it was great to be back at the zoo. Lorraine and I got there before it was open to the public in order to load in the equipment, and I’ve always enjoyed watching the zoo wake up and get ready for the crowds.

The artist we had scheduled for the opening day was Jennifer, and as soon as she was ready she had our first customer of the season, a cute little girl who she painted up as a penguin, an animal the zoo is featuring this year in it’s annual Run For the Wild fundraiser. As we were leaving, I was happy to see that her next customer was a man in his twenties, who was there with just his girlfriend, it seemed, and no kids at all — it’s great when the adults get painted. Jennifer was turning him into a tribal-style grizzly bear.

http://www.bronxzoo.com/

Working at the zoo is really just an excuse to head over to Arthur Avenue and load up on Italian food supplies. Adding to the pleasure of the morning was discovering that De Lillo, my by-far favorite Pastry Shop, had just opened in a beautiful new, bigger location, with real room for tables. Now it’s possible to get in and out with out having to worry that you’re going to knock somebody off their chair with the packages in your hands as you squeeze by their table. So we sat before going shopping. Lorraine had the berry pie and I had the perfect pastry, a sfogliatella. Heaven.

http://delillopastryshop.com/

We got home in time for me to spend the rest of today gardening, which is the most essential way in which I experience this season of renewal. The stars lined up for me yesterday as well, for as I was out there in the backyard, turning over the earth as I expanded my vegetable garden, feeling the life coming back into the land, the Rebirth Brass Band was playing live on the radio, on WNYC’s Soundcheck.

We were down in New Orleans around New Year’s Day, and I went to see the Rebirth Brass Band on their home turf for the first time, the Maple Leaf Bar — a transformational experience. I’d seen them before but never there, and I can still feel the energy of that loud, loud music going through my body in that packed bar as they went from song into song without pause, just driving the crowd on.

Facepainting — Tiger Variations

Apr8

From the simplified formula of the direct mask-like transformation of a human face into a tiger face, an endless stream of variations can be generated by altering colors, styles and decorative elements without changing the basic tiger design —in which the human eyes become the tiger eyes, the nose the tiger nose, etc. (For the basic instructions, see the previous post “How to paint a tiger face”) In the working process, as I am facepainting a succession of tiger faces, I will approach each face with a stylistic change (such as “bolder lines” or “asymmetrical”) or a cultural inspiration (such as the swirling lines of Maori tattoo) and use that change in approach to create a new variation on the spot.

Tigers are the most popular request at our Bronx Zoo concession, and for some of the zoo’s special event weekends we have done entire days when all we paint are tigers, so we’re often exploring new ways to paint this iconic animal. In 2010, the zoo hosted a Run For the Wild event to raise awareness of the critical issue of declining tiger populations. Here’s the video of the faces I painted that day:

More examples of tiger faces from 2010 and earlier zoo events.

As to why we should be turning people into tigers, David Brooks has some advice:

https://thestorybehindthefaces.com/2011/03/29/david-brooks-advice-for-facepainters/

For an amazing video on a fully realistic transformation into a tiger, here’s a video from the remarkable bodypainter, Craig Tracy:

Body Painting Fashion Show: The Odd Ball at Real Art Ways

Apr5

In April of 2009 Agostino Arts had a chance to try something new at The Odd Ball, the annual benefit party for Real Art Ways, an arts center in Hartford, CT. We brought a team of our Transformation bodypainters and a mountain of Aquacolors and got a group of their visual artists to join with us in creating a painted body fashion show.

The goal was two-fold: to create an unusual and fun performance art event for the benefit as entertainment for the guests, and to generate some excitement within the community of artists associated with Real Art Ways by giving them this opportunity to explore a new, living medium. Real Art Ways recruited the artists and volunteer models. Prior to the event I sent the artists some information about what kind of makeup we’d be bringing and the basics of how it applies, plus some blank body forms and the like that we use when designing new bodypaintings. The design process was left completely up to each individual artist. I also sent some information along for the models as to what they could expect.

We began the evening with a short workshop session to demonstrate the basic application techniques and some of the tricks of the trade, so that each artist could realize their own concept without feeling limited by any lack of previous experience. Aquacolors go on so easily that in the hands of painters it didn’t require much instruction to get them all going. Some of them had painted people before, and we had a number of our artists there to paint our own designs and help if needed. Bodypainting is fun, especially when it is being done just for its own sake like this. It is such a tactile and ephemeral process, and so collaborative between you and the model, that I think most artists experience a visceral sense of the creative act as they paint — and with a bunch of artists all together in one tight room painting away at a party it makes for a real good time. For me, it was especially exciting to see how artists used to painting on canvas and other medium brought their own style to the bodypainting.

We brought along a videographer, Ann Orrin, to document the process, and Real Art Ways had a studio photographer (Steven Laschever) shooting the finished results and a second photographer (G. Russell) also recording the process.

See the video: