Tag Archives: body art

Finding Facepainting Freedom — “Sit down and we will turn you into a work of art”

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

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4 Years of Faces at the World Science Festival

by Christopher Agostino

The World Science Festival has been a great adventure for me as a facepainter over these past four years. Working with new and unusual themes is a wonderful way to expand design concepts — plus I am a bit of a science geek and fully appreciate this opportunity to share my enthusiasm with kids and families.

I chose to go from being a lone facepainter to the director of a company of artists because I wanted to be able to have an artistic impact on large events, with dynamic face designs in sufficient number to visually alter the event. This is facepainting as a visual performance art.

Because our Transformation Facepainting concept is a constantly creative exploration of design principles rather than the repetition of specific designs, our company can create new and unique designs to suit the theme of each specific event, and thereby bring that theme to life in a fully participatory way on each guest we paint.

Our work in arts-in-education and family theater also gives us the tools to support a promotional or educational concept with contextual interactions with the people we paint as we transform them with thematic designs.

In the case of the World Science Festival, I’ve had as much fun talking with people about these things we are turning them in to as in coming up with these unique designs — telling stories about moments of science such as the 1919 solar eclipse that generated worldwide headlines proclaiming that “Einstein Was Right!”. Plus, we’ve occasionally had the privilege of painting scientists in designs that fit their field of science, as in the time that a molecular biologist doing research on the brain gave me insight into how to depict neurons firing.

I’ve also had the opportunity to present my performance/lecture on the cultural significance of masks and painted faces for some wonderful audiences in their Discovery Theater.

For more information on the lecture: https://thestorybehindthefaces.com/lecture/

Some things I might never think to paint turn out to be the inspiration for wonderful faces.  http://worldsciencefestival.com/ http://worldsciencefestival.com/blog/face_painting

     

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I Really Believe in What I Do — “Change your face and Change your evening”

by Christopher Agostino

Being a face and body painter gets a fella into such interesting places. Last night I was part of the 100 Under 2 Festival for the grand opening of Yotel NYC, a chic new hotel on 10th Ave and W. 42nd (#yotelnyc). One of 100+ performers ensconced in hotel rooms with the task of entertaining people for two minutes as they moved from floor to floor, room to room — “performance tapas” they called it. 2 minutes is not an ideal time frame for getting someone to sit down and get painted. Face and body painting works best cumulatively with people standing and watching you paint someone as they decide if they want to do it, especially with adults. Here I had to convince people cold — the glitterati invited to the event would walk by my room and I’d say “come in and be transformed”, “transform your face and transform your evening”, or just  “I’m doing body painting and looking for someone to paint.” Some did, most didn’t, most wouldn’t cross the threshold into the room. (I’d suggested to the producers that I bring a body model to paint throughout the event but they preferred that I try to get the guests painted instead).

When I was younger, a night like this of trying to sell myself with limited results would have been much tougher on me. Now, I believe more in what I do. I believe that painting someone’s face (especially an adult’s) gives them an opportunity to experience an adventure, to “transform their evening.” I wish more adults would get painted at events because it would do them some good.

Still, events like this are tough. Too much rejection, too little of the joy of painting, and the painting itself is tough with no chance to work into a good groove. Over the two hours I painted about 15 people, mostly women’s arms but also a few faces on a handful of men.

There was one older man (which means older than me, which is starting to get really old), who’d come by my room a few times, hesitating, then finally he’d made the effort to come back to me later in the event after his group had moved on to another floor. He was still hesitant and asked for something subtle, but I told him that “subtle” misses the point, that the reason to get painted is to have an effect on how people see you. And I wrapped a feathered serpent (Quetzalcoatl) around half his face. (It was a random choice on my part, I was using the colors of the decor and trying to paint less usual things to fit the unusual festival concept, but it turned out he’d recently come back from Tikal in Guatemala and so it made a connection for him). As I painted him there was a young turk in the doorway making fun of the process, calling out stupid things I could turn him in to, really the only rude person I had to deal with last night. I hoped that the he didn’t know the older man, because if he did he was being cruel.

Quetzalcoatl

Afterwards I headed to the seemingly endless cocktail party that accompanied the event, looking for a drink, talking a bit with some of the other artists — and looking for some of the people I painted, looking to see what effect I’d had. I saw Mr. Feathered Serpent and asked him how his evening was going, how it felt being painted. He told me that he felt like a celebrity. Everyone was taking his picture and talking with him. Before that, he said, he was just a guy alone, walking around a party without being noticed.

Part of why I believe in what I do is my own understanding that masking and transformational face and body art give physical, tangible credence to a fundamental human belief in the mutability of form, that things are not limited to their appearance. That I may be more (and different) than I appear to be. The experience we gain when wearing a new, painted identity — the change in how people perceive us — gives us proof of this, hopefully an encouraging proof that lasts beyond the mask. There is no limit to who or what we can be.

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,

Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

Hamlet Act 1, scene 5

http://www.agostinoarts.com

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