Pavement Art Gallery

[Ullarty]

Summer work

The garden is lovely!

I am starting to miss busking in Melbo.. have to get to it soon before its too cold!!. The festival works I have been doing have been lots of fun (well.. Rotorua wasn't really that much fun...), but always feel very rushed...

Jenny and I worked on "A Window to the future- Auckland 2888". It would have been good to have more space for the both of us to work in, as it was a complex composition based on the City, and we had some nastiness (and stop-work meetings) from a local trader as we were "blocking his entrance". We figured his entrance was blocked well before we arrived, however.....

At the Harbour festival I did a very large 5 x 3 metre Auckland seascape, with dolphins, ships, etcetera... Recently I've been working on Cockatoos (continuing on from the Games Village paintings) at Geelong and ARmadale, WA, but at Freo I did a memorial to Bon Scott of AC/DC as they are thinking of erecting a statue to him there.

PN- Roland should be in Melbo town next week...

[Ullarty]

Ulla Art at Harbourfest

A weekend at the Harbourfest.. end result.

[Ullarty]

The Bon Scott Angel

...with the devil of whiskey, and the high- voltage cherub.

[Rich Potter]

Nice writeup on a US pavement art festival:

http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB114773172837353398-lMyQjAxMDE2NDE3NjcxMzYxWj.html

They'll Be Painting
The Town Red -- and Every
Other Color, Too
By ARNIE COOPER
May 16, 2006; Page D6

Santa Barbara, Calif.

If you think performance art requires a stage or nightclub, envision a mass of contorted limbs crouching and bending over hot asphalt. Add to that some chalk pastels and inspiration from the Renaissance and you've got another kind of performance art -- street painting.

In Santa Barbara, I Madonnari, a street-painting festival, is held every Memorial Day weekend in front of the Old Mission church. Tracy Lee Stum, last year's featured artist, says she loves "being able to share the creative process with people who would normally not be able to see this." Another Madonnari regular, artist Jane Portaluppi, says: "Normally you want to present something finished; you don't want anyone coming along while you're working. But in this medium, the process and the interaction with the audience is the emphasis." And over the coming holiday, some 25,000 people will gawk and hover as Ms. Stum, Ms. Portaluppi and 400 other artists, some donning rubber gloves, most wearing huge straw hats, rub three-inch pieces of multihued pastels onto the pavement.
[Street paint]
Chalk it up to experience: Every Memorial Day weekend since 1986, the parking area in front of Santa Barbara's Old Mission church has become a temporary canvas.

Street painting is said to have originated in Italy in the 16th century, when madonnari (so named because they painted the Madonna) would travel from village to village for religious and folk festivals. As time passed, these itinerant artists would expand their repertoire to other religious icons as well as reproductions of the old masters. But their payment, coins thrown onto their "canvases," remained their only compensation.

A few centuries later, in 1972, the practice was revived when the small northern Italian town of Grazie di Curtatone began the International Street Painting Festival, which takes place every Aug. 15 on Assumption Day. Santa Barbara resident Kathy Koury attended the Grazie event in 1986.

Ms. Koury heads up the Children's Creative Project (CCP), a local nonprofit that brings art to local schoolchildren. "For 10 years I'd been trying to think of a unique fund-raising event for CCP that would relate to what we do as an organization," Ms. Koury says. Two weeks after returning home, she got a call from a neighbor who was on the committee to celebrate the mission's bicentennial. The neighbor wanted to exhibit children's drawings there, but Ms. Koury had another idea. Hastily she gathered up a few snapshots of the Grazie festival and made an impromptu 15-minute presentation. Her idea was approved. Father Virgil Cordano even agreed to repave the mission's parking area -- piazze are hard to come by, even in Santa Barbara -- into what would become the town's biggest canvas.

I Madonnari began the following May. And though the medium is the same as in the Italian festival, the American version is decidedly different. Rather than being a judged competition that requires artists to stick to Christian imagery and to work all night to finish their pieces, I Madonnari gives street painters three days to complete their work, whose subjects must only be "appropriate for public viewing."

But what really sets the Santa Barbara festival apart is its dual purpose. Besides functioning as a community art event (with food stalls and live music), I Madonnari also raises money. Each of the approximately 150 artists' squares (ranging from 4 by 6 to 12 by 16 feet) is sponsored by individuals and organizations at a cost of $125 to $600. A number of 2-by-2 squares are also set aside for children. And though purists might wince at the big block letters with sponsors' names that appear above each image, the money ($60,000 raised last year) helps cover a major performance for county schoolchildren. Past events have included the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and Wynton Marsalis and the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra.

Artists' subjects over the years have included a convertible perched on an ocean bluff, a Technicolor Mickey Mouse, a Warhol-inspired Jackie Kennedy and a black-and-white portrait of Einstein with a galaxy spinning over his head. Ms. Koury herself appeared in a 2002 painting. Unsurprisingly, there have also been countless renditions of the mission façade. And, naturally, reproductions of paintings by Raphael, Michelangelo, Da Vinci and Titian have all graced the pavement.

More intriguing, perhaps, are the images that blend past and present. Consider Ms. Stum's painting from last year, an original concept she called "Medici Garden." "I tried to imagine Lorenzo di Medici talking to Sandro Botticelli and his model for Venus," she says. But they weren't discussing Botticelli's next piece. A hint to their conversation topic can be found in the future-filled crystal ball Medici is holding in the palm of his hand. It contains Stum's self-portrait with the ever-present mission in the background.

With its four topiary trees that appear to be standing straight up from the pavement, the painting is a perfect example of anamorphism -- a striking three-dimensional effect that pops up (pun intended) frequently at the festival.

This year's featured artist, Melanie Stimmell, will be creating a novel work to commemorate I Madonnari's 20th anniversary. The 12-by-16-foot painting will depict the history of street painting by incorporating Pompeo Batoni's "The Allegory of Art" along with figures from other Italian and French paintings in Renaissance, Classical and Baroque styles.

And just below, a team of artists will tackle the festival's largest-ever creation, inspired by the cultures of Santa Barbara's sister cities, Toba, Japan, and Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. The 24-by-36-foot piece will be divided into two sections. One side will emulate woodblock print to portray a Japanese folktale based on a story of the Sun Goddess, Ama-terasu. This will morph into a depiction of Quetzalcoatl and Tezcatlipoca from the Aztec myth "The Five Suns." On Monday, May 29, the mayor of Toba, Kusuichi Kida, will help close out the festival, which culminates in a Japanese folk dance by the group Soran.

Street painting has clearly gone global. Festivals have been held in Geldern, Germany; Utrecht, Netherlands; and Istanbul. In this country, festivals can be found throughout California, as well as in Colorado, Florida and Pennsylvania. Yet no matter where it's done, challenges remain. For beyond needing a supple, flexible body to stoop and kneel on the pavement, street artists must always be ready to battle not only the broiling sun but the unexpected deluge.

Showers or not, these are ephemeral pieces -- an inescapable truth these modern masters must deal with. Participating at the Lake Worth, Fla., festival two years ago, Ms. Portaluppi and other artists painted their images directly on a temporarily car-free Route 1. Once the festival ended, skid marks quickly replaced sketch marks. "It was the strangest sensation to have spent two days on the ground like that and to see cars go over it," she says.

While the highway here in Santa Barbara is reserved for vehicles, the street paintings at I Madonnari eventually fade away, too. But for three days each Memorial Day weekend in front of the "Queen of the Missions," it is creation, not destruction, that holds center stage.

Mr. Cooper is a free-lance writer in Santa Barbara, Calif.

[martin ewen]

heres a good one

http://www.planetperplex.com/en/img.php?id=331

[Peter Voice]

This is my first serious picture for about 3 years. I designed it for the Singapore Art Festival and Bev and Diana Isaac did most of the drawing . It's in the courtyard of the Esplanade Theatre Complex. A great venue but there were tropical downpours daily and it was 37C in the shade.
The photo was taken just after a shower (about 2hrs before our flight out) and is a bit distorted by the wide angle lens I had to use to get the background in. We worked early mornings and evenings with terrific crowds. I would have liked a couple more days on it.

[Peter Voice]

Now I look at it after a good night's sleep, the photo is a little disappointing as the rain drove away the crowd. You have to try and imagine the drawing without the barriers and Bev and Diana (who are depicted drawing the drawing within the drawing) drawing at the top edge. Fill the tables and chairs and have people flowing into the courtyard and you have what the scene looked like when it wasn't raining. Below is the pitch (from the opposite angle) about 1hr before, 3pm.
The rain usually stopped about 5.

[Peter Voice]

This is Bev Isaac working last Sunday on our latest drawing.

About 12 days ago, I started the thread "Surprising" because I was bored whilst sitting at home waiting for the 2.30am start of the Australia v Italy World Cup soccer/football game.

At half time, I got an email from some, supposed Spanish, guy asking me to come and work in Madrid next week. I thought it was a joke and replied that I was busy watching football and that he would have to try very hard to convince me he was serious. I had a small gap but was happily booked for a good gig in Sydney later this month.

The drawing is in Madrid.

[Peter Voice]

Bev working on the same picture but from a different angle.

You can see the whole project on a video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FjcY5y_nLbQ if you want.

[Bev]

Here is a drawing done on the weekend for the Monash Pharmeceutical Dpt celebrating its 125th anniversary. It's a reproduction of a detail from the main panel of a Len Annoir fresco painted in the early 1960's celebrating Sisson.??
Some famous scientist famous for his research. Not sure really.

Diana and I were contracted to make this pavement art for the open day last Saturday.
We had to start a half a day in advance to meet our deadline.
There was a lot of detail in the original although we were told we could have some artistic licence and make some abreviations.

We both found the work exitingly different to the kind of advertising work we have been doing recently and a lot of fun once mapped.

Would love it if some of you other pavement artists would post here and show your latest creations.

[Peter Voice]

Was scanning some old photos today and came across this one I really like by Bev and Diana Isaac. It was drawn last year during the lead up to the Melbourne Cup (an Australian obsession revolving around a horse race). Bev drew The Race-horse and Diana drew The Punter and I reckon it's a beauty.

[Peter Voice]

Another strange little pic of Bev's that I found among the photos.

I do hope I'm not boring every-one with this stuff.

[Peter Voice]

Arthur Stace by Jamieson

This weekend the second "Chalk the Walk" pavement art competition was held in Sydney. Bev had a unrelated gig there on Fri. and I had to see my lawyer up there, to sign and submit a whole lot of legal documents. We're not into competitions much ourselves but don't have anything against those that do celebrate our artform and I think this event has the potential to turn into a real festival. The Director, Andi Mether, is working pretty hard and Sydney is a tough nut to crack but she seems to know what she's doing and be open and honest. It was good fun but hot and exposed.


I had to leave Sat evening so none of the photo's I took are the artist's finished works but I wanted to put a couple up anyway.

This picture is by Jamieson Lawrence and is of a legendary Sydney charactor, Arthur Stace.

Although completely different people off the street, to me, Jameson is to pavement art what Anthony Livingspace is to street performing. He never fails to blow me away one way or another and is without doubt my favourite p.artist.

The story of Arthur Stace is a truly remarkable one and he was/is and always will be Australia's most famous p.artist.

He was born in a Balmain slum in 1884, less than a mile (km) from where "Chalk the Walk" is sited. His childhood was one mired in alcohol, crime and his schooling almost non- existant.

Life continued as such until Stace enlisted and fought in WW1. He went to France and returned home gassed and half blind in one eye. He fell into morbid alcoholism, theft, was jailed and nearly committed.

The words of a Judge that gave him one more chance and priest at a church he occasionally went to for a free meal touched something in him one day. Only two words, POWER, from the Judge and ETERNITY from the priest. Arthur had found a piece of yellow chalk that day too and later wrote the word eternity in beautiful "copperscript" on the ground. He could not even write his own name. It was 1930. He never considered writing the word POWER.

He gave up the booze and crime overnight, became deeply religious, married and settled in Pyrmont, even closer to "Chalk the Walk"s site on the historic Pyrmont Bridge. He got up at 4am every day and went out writing the word ETERNITY every 100 metres or so all over Sydney's busiest streets. He changed from chalk to wax marking crayons to withstand the rain and foot traffic longer. Despite trying other messages, it did not work as he could not write them.

His identity was not discovered until June 21, 1956, at which time it had been estimated that he had written the word over 500,000 times. Unfortunately, once discovered he stopped and took up street preaching.

Arthur died July 30, 1967, he was 83.

I'll replace this pic with the finished product when I get one.

[Peter Voice]

This was the scene at "Chalk the Walk" about 2pm Saturday. It was hot and exposed but had a very good feel. I don't know who won yet.

[Peter Voice]

The winner of the comp. was Gary Jagamarra. It's a beautiful picture. You can find his pic, the results and other pictures at http://www.chalkthewalk.com
I told several artists about this site and hope some might visit and give their impressions.