Saturday, October 11, 2008

Why I Love Street Painting


Light Manifest is back after some time away so I can share a new project: Pastel Street Painting! Scottsdale is having the first annual Via Colori festival this weekend! There is no way I will miss this. Let me explain.

I was introduced to the medium in my hometown of San Rafael a few years back. Strolling around Saturday morning with a borrowed video camera, I snapped artists at work (left). Streets in both directions around our local Mission filled with people creating large temporary works of art directly on the pavement. Each artist had a square though a few teamed up on one large square. The pavement was fresh and black... with no lines yet. People strolled up and down, watching the squares develop, talking to the artists, taking snapshots and listening to music.
During those two days in June, I filmed amazing art-as-process. At the end of two days the streets were opened, lines were painted, and traffic resumed. For days after, I drove back along those streets , visiting my favorites and marveling at the color and life gazing up at me. Gradually they faded, though my love of street painting never did.

Now these works are long gone. Today when I look at my old VHS tape, I see each beautiful work ... still in progress. The California sun still shines, live music is drifting through the air, swallows and pigeons fill the sky and the mission bells chime. There is laughter in the air, and the act of creating lays on the pavement like a benediction.

The next year I was a Street Painter, too. I did a rendering of two white egrets (above right) on a 4 x 6 square. And now Via Colori has come to Scottsdale.

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