Category Archives: Facepainting

Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts – PIFA – Saturday

A bunch of us are heading to Philly to paint and perform this Saturday for the PIFA street fair produced by The Kimmel Center. From their website:

“Broad Street transforms into a slice of Paris, with street vendors, café tables, a grass-laden park, live music on two Festival stages, and a giant Ferris Wheel. Don’t miss the thrilling climax, as world-renowned French theatrical troupe La Compagnie Transe Express performs 100 feet in the air!”

http://www.kimmelcenter.org/events/pifastreetfair.php

I will be performing my storytelling show street theater style at 11:30 am and 3:00 pm, at the Amphitheater.

Two shows will mean two different sets of stories.

We also have a team of artists there painting faces. The theme of the whole event is Paris 1910-1920, so our artists will be painting faces inspired by artists associated with Paris of that era — Impressionists, Fauvists, early Modern Artists — and other French themed imagery. The participants will be asked to sit down and be turned into a work of art — no requests, every face a surprise. Even though there is nothing that excites me as much as performing, I’m a bit envious that I won’t get to do the painting, it’s just the kind of painting I love to do.

To support my artists in their own explorations of the theme I collected images of artwork from the era and asked them to find additional examples. I also have a lot of examples of faces I’ve painted that fit because I’ve been incorporating modern art into my facepainting since I painted for a Picasso exhibit at the Nassau County Museum of Art in 2006.

 

One of the faces I painted at the Picasso exhibit in the Nassau County Museum of Art, that started me on an exploration of modern art on faces.

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Easter Bunny Breakfast in the Year of the Rabbit

a new idea for today's Breakfast with the Easter Bunny

A couple of us painted at the annual Breakfast with the Easter Bunny at Macy’s Herald Square store this morning. Here’s a few bunny faces from that, and from a Chinese New Year’s event I painted at back in January celebrating the Year of the Rabbit.

basic bunny

a design based on a specific Chinese Opera face, which had that very cute bunny design on the mouth

a hawk, I guess in case there are too many bunnies

World Masks – Facepainting Workshop

I had a wonderful experience yesterday sharing this art of transformation with a enthusiastic group of High School students. First I did a one hour presentation of my Transformation Lecture for a very attentive audience of art students.

Then we did a facepainting training session with a select group of the students, first demonstrating the application technique and then having them work in pairs to paint each other’s faces. After that it was students painting students, as the High School artists had the chance to paint several classes of Elementary School students, from pre-K to grade 4.

We were in an inspiring setting, surrounded by the students’ artwork on exhibit for their annual art and music festival. With the opportunity for each of them to paint several faces their confidence and creativity grew over the course of the session. In between the groups of younger students, the artists would add to and refine the faces they had painted on each other, creating several examples of striking designs. One of the joys I derive when teaching facepainting to new students is how they surprise me with what they create. Working without the pre-conceptions of experienced facepainters, they will combine colors and design elements with such freedom that I wind up learning  from my students.

Using traditional tribal designs as the models for the facepainting helps move the students past concerns about their ability as painters and fosters that sense of creative freedom. Tribal faces don’t need to look like any specific thing — they are celebrations of colors, lines, dots and shapes in any way the artist chooses. I share with them my belief that more important than what you paint on someone’s face is how they feel about being painted, and encourage the artists to make a connection with the child they are painting. Before each class came in to be painted, I talked with the younger kids about how wild they would look, in designs from tribal cultures around the world, and that their High School student artist wasn’t even going to ask them what they want to be because every face is a surprise. I can safely say that a good time was had by all. The artists did great job and we all enjoyed seeing how excited the kids were to look into the mirror and see the creative works of art they had become.

To learn about the lecture program:  https://thestorybehindthefaces.com/lecture/

For more info on the tribal faces that we used as inspiration, see: https://thestorybehindthefaces.com/2011/04/12/traditional-facepainting-world-masks-workshop/

 

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