45 meters of painting on the pavement

 

9am Sunday morning, and it seemed many of our painter friends were a bit skittish about painting in public - they were not performing artists they said. This was going to be a tricky one...and the bigger Q: how do we get the people in the crowd to participate?

Over dosas at my parents place an hour later Mesha struck gold! Indian Express carried on its front page a picture of kids in Germany painting the longest canvas. Our first Act on St.Marks a month or so back, we had done something similar except with just 5 ppl. So 2 and 2 together we made 1000!

A dash to Art Materials in Kumara Park to get some running length of white paper, some brushes, borrowed easels, hunt for buckets and basins, all the paints that either of us owned, and we were set...but the rain god was upset it seemed.
3 pm found the two of us sitting on the portico of Motas while it rained down on us. We figured that even if was going to pour, we'd still just put up our easels and paint...more statement that!
3:15 pm the rains stopped. Up went the banners. Out came our art goodies. Jo brought in the water, Vibin and Abi helped us roll out the paper, Smitha, Ashish set up the easels, Udai and Saurabh got out their cameras...

4 pm sharp we were ready, set, go!

The crowds totally got into the act. Loved the way so many people just picked up the brushes, or dipped in their hands and wrote, drew, marked the paper. And the kids were adorable…kumar and his sister, diya and keya - fully sweet.

So now we have about 45 meters of art created by the people on the streets. And all kinds of ideas come to mind. We can make an animation short, we could use the paper to create an interesting sculpture. it would be great to have it back on the street as a public installation someday - a community graffiti installation piece. hmmmm...

Special thanks to the guys who helped us paint-on-the-street:
Vibin Nair
Abhijeet S Dev
Johanna Barretto
Smitha
Ashish S
Dawood
Udai Singh Pawar - Video
Saurabh - Photos

Fully thanks you who came inspite of the dark clouds:
Jitu
The Joys - Joseph, Chandana, Diya and Keya
Anand Bora
Roshini Gyara
Veda
Archana Handa
Manoj V
George Paul
Pramod