'I dream my painting, and then I paint my dream.'
Van Gogh
With most holidays, our views and experience of the day change and evolve as we age. As kids, Christmas, Halloween, the 4th, are rooted in magic, bright lights and dazzling colors. Worry free days full of running, dancing and fun and games. For most of us, they were also rooted in art. Most of us, were privileged with having art classes when in school. This meant that holiday's involved creating colorful cards, ruby red Valentines, construction paper orange pumpkins, and glued on cotton ball beards for Santa.
The Forth of July occurs when most of us were on summer vacation, but if we had been in art class, the teacher would have pulled out the roll of brown art paper, cut a long piece to cover one side of the classroom, taped it to the wall, and asked the class to fill the paper banner with hundreds of red, white and blue hand prints.
As adults, we worry about getting paint on the floor and furniture. We'd rather buy a Valentine at the dollar store instead of making one. Cotton balls, well, they're now reserved for taking off make-up, or cleaning a cut, they're no longer an element for creating a beard for Saint Nicholas. For Tom Nakielski, (Lights On Studio) the goal going into his Forth of July shoot was about having fun. Returning to that child like innocence isn't as easy as it may appear.
There's a reason you don't see grown men and women skipping through fields of wild flowers. More than likely, someone would call the police. We're told to remember the magic, but we're not really encouraged to act on it. That is unless you're an artist. Artists and models get to return to forth grade art classes every time they pic up a camera, a paint brush or take on a character for a shoot. They get to focus on creating, on color, on movement. They get to use a muscle so many adults ignore and no longer use, their imagination.
For Kay, who many FH readers met last year with his work with The Third Eye, (Beyond the Obvious) painting Tom's walls with the red, white and blue was all about having fun. When Tom first explained his Forth of July concept, Kay wasn't initially sure what to think, but it all sounded like so much fun, he could't resist the challenge.
'This was a bit of a different shoot for me, both in general, and in terms of my work with Tom. I've pretty much just done studio shoots, usually pretty formal stuff, so getting silly outside with the paint & with a specific theme was a nice change of pace! I'd like to keep branching out and trying new things, when I get the chance to. The cleanup from the painting was a bit of a mess, though thankfully, it was all washable!'
The session materialize for Tom when Kay let him know he'd be in Lansing from Chicago to do some personal business. Tom knew it was a good opportunity, and the perfect timing, to do a 4th of July shoot. Tom's studio is an old factory/warehouse. There is a loading dock in the back that Tom had previously used for high school seniors to spray paint and add graffiti to the walls. Tom wanted to do something a little different, so had the idea of having Kay put his artistic skills to use. Naked of course!
'I suggested to Kay that we paint it red, white, and blue using his hands as the paintbrush. A new adventure for both of us. He said he would try it although he wasn't sure just how well he would do. He had never done any graffiti before. But I was sure no matter what resulted, it would work out just fine and be fun. Kay is artistic himself, and we mentally regressed to a 1st-grade attitude and played with the poster paint. The result was no Picasso or Rembrandt. Perhaps a cross between Warhol and a 1st graders finger painting. It was pure fun.'
No comments:
Post a Comment