Art Band March 31, 2009

I recently decided to go out on a limb for a cocktail party I threw for some friends. I tacked up a large sheet of drawing paper atop a cloth sheet that spanned the entire wall and part of the floor. I bought oil sticks in black, white, red, blue, and green that I placed out in the studio for people to use. It was an experiment to see what would emerge.

It all began with the words “please draw something here” (and a gentle nudge by me to a few people) and shortly after a few shapes — a sun, a flower, and the ghosts of a truck and a comet-shaped figure. As the piece continued, people loosened up and began getting really creative. I witnessed the tracing of a hammer multiple times to suggest the action a hammer would make, as well as the dragging of a long strip of masking tape diagonally across the entire paper, which then was painted over and removed. The next thing I knew, bold moves were made to cement the overall composition — a large tree trunk spanned down the center and ground the entire piece. A small city cropped up on the trunk, multiple trucks cascaded through the branches, flowers bloomed, and the sheet of paper emerged as one cohesive piece of art.

friends at work

final collab piece

What inspired me to try out this experiment is my belief that every person is an artist, to some degree or another. In my life, art has become a path of self discovery. One finds out how she or he expresses her/himself in a visual manner. What initially surprised me the most was certain imagery that popped up in the picture. First, 3 “Mack” trucks barrel onto the page, all approaching from different angles, but not on the “ground” (where the tree trunk is planted), instead all on the top half of the paper. Attached to one of the trucks is a bat-like wing, and 3 hammers look like they’ve been captured in motion. Now, after studying the piece for a while, several creatures creep out at me. One looks like a dragon or a bull blowing fire and smoke from its nostrils. To the right, a devilish character lurks, green and red (bonus points for use of complimentary colors!), peeking out from behind the tree. Then, there’s the red bicycle riding atop the truck. I also recall the funniest comment of the night, someone pointing out “I did the part that looks like poo,” which it literally does. I found it right away.

Not only did I observe certain characteristics among my friends, but I am fascinated by what I learned about the process of creating art. The first time I ever tried this type of experiment was actually a few years ago, back in the “Beachwood Days.” I put a piece of paper down on the coffee table outside in my garage studio. While there were some interesting doodles that surfaced that night, the art piece ended up looking more like the inside cover of a yearbook. The materials and the presentation of the canvas really can make all the difference. Not only that, 5 years later, older, after many weak sessions of video games (and westside versus Hollywood), I found a much more uninhibited crowd of participants. Could the collab piece creation be the new “art band”?