Happy 4th of July

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

The Kinetic Art of Face Painting – Pt.1: Sending Art off into the World (thestorybehindthefaces.com)
First Night Hartford – Face Painting Adults and the Final Faces of 2011 (thestorybehindthefaces.com)

4 Years of Faces at the World Science Festival

Jun17

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.