Art with a purpose

We had an Open Mic Night for the teens at the library Friday night, and I was able to bring out my painting that I made for our first open mic night several years ago. My co-librarian Anarda and I had first gone to Burroughs High School to see their after-school open mic event to get an idea of what to expect, and one of the kids had made a great poster to put up on an easel behind the performers, which gave me the idea.

About a year before this, I had been out walking one morning and discovered a household a few blocks over where people were either cleaning out or moving out. By the curb, leaning against the trash cans, were four very large stretched canvases (maybe 3x5' each?). They were painted a horrible shade of turquoise, and were covered with little patches--the back side of velcro pairings; apparently they had been hung on the walls of someone's bedroom and had things stuck to them. I promptly jogged home, got my car, and came back for the canvases, but since I had switched my medium a few years before from acrylic to watercolor, they sat in my garage for some time. The advent of open mic night let me put one to use.

I gessoed over the turquoise, and went to the store to buy five very large tubes of acrylic in a particular color palate. I found a photo I liked online, drew a grid on it, and then duplicated that grid on my canvas. And over a weekend, I painted our "poster," which appears here in a photo behind Joey playing his trumpet on Friday night. Some of us can't play an instrument or sing, and painting isn't a talent that translates very well to the stage--but this is my contribution to our program. And it was fun, slopping acrylic around again!