Pavement Art Gallery

[Peter Voice]

I think, in my own bumbling manner, that I have successfully conquered some of the abilities of my new laptop (think of giving your grandmother a Porsche) and finally made a YouTube clip at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHujexQbl3I . It's not really a movie.

I tried to work out the copyright issues with the music but Freddy's dead and Brian won't answer my calls since the incident at Rob's 50th birthday party. Don't be fooled by the first few images, it is quite different to "The Art of Campfire Cooking.

As I'm in a very primative dial-up world, I had to go to a friend's house to try this and am not completely sure it worked.

I hope you like it if it does.

[Peter Voice]

Chalk Circle's Spanish Adventure Part 1

I put up a couple of photos from this gig about 3 pages back but thought the story worth telling so.......

1.21am Tuesday 26.6.06

In a haze of jetlag, duty-free scotch, fragrant smoke and way too much coffee, I was waiting for the Australia Vs Italy World Cup semi final when I received an email asking if I was interested in doing a pavement art piece in Spain in July. I had, in a bored moment, put a posting on performers.net about waiting for the game only an hour before and thought it was probably a joke from another p.netter. I replied, tongue in cheek that I assumed he meant next year and that the only reason I was replying at this hour was jetlag and the soccer game. I suggested he get back to me in a month or so.

At half time I received another email saying they had hoped I would be up watching the game and “no, not next year, next week”. “Ha ha” I thought, and I wrote back saying as much. I pointed out that I had just returned from an intense 10 day gig in Singapore and had another gig booked for mid July and that I didn’t think he would even be able to transfer a deposit or make any other proof of sincerity in time for us to do anything. I still thought it was a joke and went back to the match.

Australia lost and as I went to turn off the computer, another email arrived. “The Italian dived” was the headline. They asked me to read the attached brief, tell them if I could do it and for how much. They would convince me tomorrow, if I wanted to do it. It was for a TV commercial, I read it, said OK, quoted a staggering price, challenged them to prove they were serious and went to bed, still unconvinced.

While all this was happening, Bev was blissfully asleep dreaming of her first real holiday in I don’t know how long. Without waking me, she was up at 7am and left with a couple of best girlfriends for the much needed break. I surfaced, somewhat secondhand, mid afternoon and pottered about in a daze until the phone rang about 6pm. “Diego, here” it said, and vague memories of last night’s exchange seemed to coalesce in my abused brain. “Let’s do it.” he said, “Ugh” I replied as I desperately tried to simultaneously turn on the computers and recall what I wrote last night. “The fee will be fine,” he said. “God, how much did I quote” I thought, then “Oh, wow!!” when I saw the last email.

The brief was actually quite interesting and several ideas were discussed but again I had to mention the tight deadlines and Diego said to start working on sketches and leave the details to him, he’d get back to me. Still thinking it was too good to be true, I went back to bed.

8.00am Thursday 28.6.06

After a solid 12 hours sleep, I actually feel better and over breakfast I pondered the improbable conversations and my own mental state. When I turned on the computer, there was a simple message from Diego, “Pls ring Qantas and quote booking number xxxxxxx. Pls let send sketches as soon as possible”. I rang Qantas and found two confirmed Business Class tickets to Madrid for Bev and I leaving on Sunday night. I had not even spoken to Bev about this. I got through to her that evening and when I told her she had to come home she was pretty pissed off, when I told her why, she forgave me, had a big night out and was home the next day.
I drew during the day and then exchanged emails and phone calls all night and after more than 60 emails, 20 sketches, a photo shoot, and more sketches the plan was in place about 4 hours before we left for the airport.

We were to arrive Mon 5pm, in Madrid, Tuesday morning was a production meeting in the morning and a site inspection in the afternoon. Weds. we were to start work, finishing Sunday. On Monday the film crew would film the commercial and Tues. was our only day off, as we had to fly home at 5am Weds to meet our commitment in Sydney the following weekend.

9.15pm Sunday 31.6.06

We boarded flight QF 22 to Heathrow via Hong Kong.

The stage was set.

[Peter Voice]

Chalk Circle’s Spanish Adventure (Part 2)

I sent my last sketch about 4pm Sunday afternoon and received approval as I finished packing. Over dinner, I watched my football team beat the league leaders, away, in an unlikely and famous victory. Life was very good.
The first glitch occurred at check-in, our client had put our given names in the wrong order and the tickets would have to be re-issued, blah, blah, blah but after about 40mins f*$%ing around, we boarded. I think I have a genetic imperative to turn left when I board a plane, it feels far more natural. I was now more exhausted than when I got home from Singapore and gratefully reclined the bed.

The flight was a dream then we landed at Heathrow.

You could see the smog for a hundred miles as we approached and the steward informed us that is was an unbelievable 35C in London that day. Much of the airport’s air-conditioning systems had failed due to over load and it was a nightmare. First our connecting flight was delayed an hour, then another and finally four hours later we were informed it had been cancelled due to a Spanish pilots’ strike.

Aside from better seats and exclusive lounges, Business Class tickets have other advantages and we were soon shuffled onto one of the few skeleton flights albeit 6 hours late. Of course, our luggage was still packed into the other plane stalled on the tarmac and we have no idea how long the other 200 passengers were stranded in that Heathrow hell-hole. We arrived in Madrid about midnight, waited forever at the carousel and then spent 2 hrs putting in a luggage claim. Madrid’s new airport had only been open for a couple of weeks and was a diabolical exercise in navigation but we finally got out only to find the first 3 auto tellers would not recognise my visa card. The 4th did and we managed to get a taxi to our hotel by about 2am.

I have to digress here as this hotel deserves mention. I have stayed in, drank at and visited many hotels that regale in the name Palace, the so and so palace the Palace whats-its-name but this place the “Palacio del Ritiro” really means it. When the porter opens double 9ft high doors and bows as he shows you your suite and tells you the bar fridge is complimentary and will be refilled any time you like, you know it’s not a Motor-Inn. It was directly across the road from Ritiro Park complete with buskers, anarchist musos and the incredible monument to Alphose the dozen. The Prado was fully 400 metres away and the Sophia, home of Picasso’s “Guernica” only another 5 min. walk. The balcony was one of the most decadently beautiful places I’ve ever enjoyed.

Having said that, Bev and I were standing in the same clothes in which we boarded the plane over 30 hours ago and had no equipment, pastels, sketches, anything. The balcony was adorned with hand washed knickers, socks and T-shirts when we crashed at about 4am, mindful of our production meeting at 10am.

Despite my slightly damp underwear and the hotel’s complimentary slippers the production meeting went well until a phone call interrupted to in form us that we could not use the site we intended and another had to be found. Oh, and their client wanted changes to the image too. In the meantime our client offered to take us shopping for necessities, money was not an issue as the airline had to pay some of it back and the client had, unknown to me, already paid our full fee into our account.

Diego took us to a huge dept store and we left Bev in the Women’s Wear dept while I searched for paper and pens to sketch with and also picked up some clothes. When we met Bev at the appointed time, we found her with store security after having her wallet, complete with the card accessing our full fee for the gig, stolen whilst she shopped. It took over 2 hours to satisfy the sincere concerns and requirements of the store security and law enforcement officers that became involved. Several calls to Australia and nearly 4 hrs later we had managed to totally kill the card. "This is going well" we thought.

We ate room service that night and after giving up again on our luggage, went walking in the park. It was hot and the park was every bit as beautiful as you could imagine. Slept like babies with the balcony doors wide open and the sounds of Madrid our lullaby.

Weds morning saw no luggage and me madly drawing new sketches for the client. Bev went to visit the Prado and Diego told me they had found a new site and we’d look at it after lunch. I had an “oxtail stuffed capsicum” for lunch and by 3 o’clock that afternoon was doubled up with food poisoning whilst trying to sort out the site and camera angles with the film crew. Several self induced vomiting sessions seemed to exhaust the bug as much as it did me. Weds. night was also spent in the hotel and walking in the park. We were already a day behind schedule and still no luggage.

Thursday morning our “minder’, Segio, arrived, having no tools or materials with which to do the work the following hour was quite unreal. I doubt if the art store he took us to has ever had a customer like us. I guess I spent 1500 euros in about 15 minutes.

We started work about an hour later. The site was an obscure car-park in the industrial outskirts of Madrid where they had erected a huge tent and had rubbish bins full of iced fruit, beer, wine, and food for us. The surface was so rough that, after mapping the work out, I had to fill it with plaster. They seemed puzzled that we did not want more food and the fact that we did not take long breaks (siesta) during the heat of the day also threw them. It was not one of our easiest days.

When we returned to our hotel about 10 that evening, our luggage, or at least most of it, had arrived. Bev’s case was OK but mine was crushed and full of burst paint pots etc. The guitar was to remain missing for some weeks. After cleaning the mess, we ate in again and crashed.

After 12 hours solid on Friday, we started to realise we were going to meet our deadline and relaxed a little. Sergio had kindly procured a surprisingly large piece of very fine resin for us and that evening we finally ventured out to explore Madrid a little. Ahhh, the joys of tapas, Spanish beer and the mohito. Sat. was much the same and we finished on time Sun. evening. Despite the exhaustion we enjoyed another great night out.

The filming was tomorrow.

[Peter Voice]

Chalk Circle’s Spanish Adventure Part 3

Monday, filming day, dawned bright and sunny, too sunny. The previous week had seen temperatures around 38C but today was going to be 45C. When we arrived at the set the tent was gone and a very serious film crew was crawling all over the place. My only job was to adjust the colours of the shadows if necessary, so I made myself comfortable in the hospitality tent and waited. The Spanish sure know how to cater for a film crew.

Because of the importance of shadows in 3D art, the filming had to be done in the narrow timeslot between 2pm and 3.30pm or the image would not work. These guys were full-on and the ad was to be filmed 35mm not video. Readings were taken, poses tried, checked and tried again as the temperature rose. The models, a young man as father figure and a young girl who was to pose between the drawn figures slowly fried in the sun. I adjusted the shadows, then had to do them again after a huge reflector was added. Dust and dried grass clippings from an adjacent field kept blowing onto the picture so I told the producer and director that I’d clean it. They knew the work was waterproof but no-one else did and the shock wave that swept through the set when I threw a bucket of water on the picture would have registered on seismographs in New Zealand.

At 11.45 the camera failed. This was about $400,000 worth of camera weighing about 120kg and an almost unheard of event. Panic ensued, phone calls made and another located on a film set elsewhere in Madrid. A minor glitch that would be solved within the hour, the producer explained to the representatives of the bank, Spain’s largest, that had commissioned the ad. “Have a glass of wine and relax in the hospitality tent” he added. The replacement camera duly arrived at about 12.30 and after about 30mins to fit it to the boom, it promptly failed after about 30 seconds of test footage. Now the panic took on a new urgency. A dinky little video camera was fitted to the boom and images kept flowing through to the monitors in the hospitality tent where the clients were watching. In one of my more brilliant performances I managed to keep the clients distracted for well over an hour despite my lack of Spanish. The look of relief on the producer’s face every time he had a peek inside the tent was classic. The third camera arrived almost exactly at the same time the clients realised some thing was not quite right, they had seen the same bit of footage about 8 times.

By 3pm then the camera was finally up and running, the little girl that was supposed to be in the shot had been sent home due to the heat and the other actor was nearly dead. They had time for only three takes. The end product was about 4 seconds of pretty ordinary film.

We spent the last day being guided by one of the casual film crew around some really wonderful parts of Madrid and surrounds before heading back to the hotel to pack.

It was painful to not be able to stay longer. Bev had been to Spain many years ago but I had not and wanted to see more. The gig in Sydney had been long booked and we were not going to renege, so we flew home.

Bev was already back at the airport for the gig in Sydney when it was cancelled, due to rain, the day after we got home.

A video of this gig is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FjcY5y_nLbQ

[Rachel Peters]

self indulgence

heh heh.

[Bev]

Hi Rachel, that is a good cartoon and while it maybe not a lot like how you appear in your photos ,it is a neat peice of pavement art that may get you some good responses .
I like the clean way you have used your materials and the colours.

[Rachel Peters]

I'm going to try to stick primarily to cartoons/caricatures, which feels wierd to do in pavement -- I DO do serious drawing, but I feel this is already "my thang", so why not go with it.

I've never before stuck with one theme or style for very long in art, so we'll see how long it takes before I snap.

...I'm still learning very much about the materials themselves. It aint paint.

[Peter Voice]

I scanned this today for an old friend who is an avid collector of anything to do with Charlie Chaplin. It was drawn by Bev Isaac way back about 1989. Hope you like it and I'll send a free super A3 print to any non-Australian performer who can pick or guess the location. The street name will do.

[FireNix]

Adelaide?

Well its the only Mall ive worked in Oz!!

[Rachel Peters]

To the MAX!

I wanted to create something completely original in p.art, so I've decided to go extreme. I'll tape all colours of chalk to my face (and a few in the nose to display my skills in blockhead), drink a few cofees and just go at the pavement like a woodpecker.

I'll call it something like "nose to the grind stone".

I'm hoping the hat will cover my plastic surgery expenses.

PS: I'm full of it.

[Rachel Peters]

otterwa or bust

shout-out to Ottawa's regular boy, Francois Pelletier.
Beautiful.

[Rachel Peters]

Monkey Balls

I felt like a fraud next to Francois, but got a lot of good feedback from passers-by and advice from Francois.
This piece is obviously just a variation on my "vs" theme. It's basically "Shark vs. Robot", only with a bit more attitude. ...and was too fricken huge for one day's work.

Learning a lot of things the hard way, but learning. Next time.
I'll stick to my style.
Got a wicked tan... on one arm.

Only had one day to do this before the film fest kicked in.
Had an unbelievable time. Best of both worlds.

[Evan Young]

I dig it man

my money is on the Flaming Monkey Balll!

[Peter Voice]

There are no frauds, Rachel, you either have the guts and do it, or you don't. You have and you did.
No doubt both pictures, and artists, have different appeal and impact but I can't see any reason to think one more relevent or valuable than the other. In fact, the contrast compliments both of you.
It's a great fun picture that made both Bev and I laugh out loud and is beautifully executed. That sort of work should hold its own in any viable environment so I hope you made some money to encourage your pocket while the compliments encouraged the spirit.
Thanks too, for putting up Francois' work, nice. I'd like to see more of newer people here. Hope you told him to visit p.net if he can.

Sydney's "Chalk the Walk" just finished Sunday, I couldn't afford to go so am hoping some-one will put something up here to "show and tell" us how it went. I did my bit last year.

[Rachel Peters]

Originally posted by Peter Voice


made both Bev and I laugh out loud

That made it all worth it.

And no, I made horrible hat, but all due to my own bad strategies that I feel stupid about now. It all seems so obvious in retrospect. Next time.
I'm grateful Francois was around that weekend, to watch and talk to, otherwise I would have assumed it was my style and might have just given up.
But it paid enough for a few meals which I ate across the way from my work and his, watching him woo the crowd and becoming obsessed with watching people's reactions to my own work, a few feet away. I could have stayed all day, observing.