Tag Archives: christopher agostino

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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Ver Veris — The Evolution of Civilization

A fascinating video from a young friend, Tzintzun Aguilar:

“A symbolic synthesis of the history of mankind composed of clips taken from old black and white documentaries. Though the images may not be modern, they are edited in rhythmic sequences to express current themes. 

Simbólico resumen de la historia de los seres humanos, compuesto por clips tomados de viejos documentales en blanco y negro, editados de tal forma que expresen temas actuales.”

Tzintzun is the son of one of my mentors, Sigfrido Aguilar — a master of physical theater. Sigfrido’s teachings on the universal language of physicality, of synthesis of content, and of the use of the abstract/concrete to add resonance to imagery, these are concepts that imbue all my work, visual and theatrical. To learn more about his Estudio Busqueda de Pantomima-Teatro, located on a mountainside in beautiful Valenciana, Guanajuato in Mexico, visit:

http://www.pantomimetheater.org

The view from Valenciana, with the city of Guanajuato in the valley below

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: