Rock ‘N Roll Fantasy: A Paint-By-Number Mural
Summer 2019, it feels like you were somehow so long ago and just yesterday. Our last “real summer” before the pandemic, you were full of art and adventure! I had the awesome fortune of creating an interactive art piece for Wavelength - an organization I love dearly who has brought so much excellent local music into my life - this time at their Summer Music & Arts Festival at Stackt Market. I wanted to try something new and my interactive paint-by-number mural was born!
You’re familiar with paint-by-numbers, I’m sure. You get a little canvas that’s been divided into shapes and marked with numbers that correspond to specific colours, a palette of numbered paints and you get to create your own little masterpiece. They’re pretty fun, in a relaxing and meditative kind of way. But if you enlarge them and bring them to a music festival they’re THE BEST!!! Super fun, super social, super collaborative, and still meditative in an interesting way. Audiences are so used to viewing the art at events like this. When given the opportunity to become artists themselves, they relished it!
The theme for the festival was ‘Under the Sea’, which inspired my fantastic musical seascape. I wanted to design a mural that was full of whimsical surprises, that viewers could look at again and again and always discover something new. As much as I loved facilitating the mural painting, designing it was almost as much fun!
Here is my very first sketch which, bless Wavelength’s heart for having faith in me, led to the masterpiece itself:
And here is the final illustration:
It’s so joyful and I love it so much!!
Turning it into a mural took some logistical creativity and it worked out so well <3 Over the span of the two day festival so many people participated in the painting. Some people were happy to spend a few minutes on it while others dedicated hours and would regularly come back to contribute between music sets. Children, of course, were the cutest, some so young that their parents had to help them hold their brushes. Everyone who participated had a great time. Toward the end of the festival there was a group of dedicated painters determined to get it finished. And finish it they did! Considering this was my first time planning a project of this magnitude I did a great job estimating the time management. Is it weird that that feels like a big accomplishment??
Rock ‘N Roll fantasy was such a roaring success that I decided to turn over a new leaf in my practice and offer custom paint-by-number murals for more festivals, weddings, birthday parties, corporate events, bar mitzvahs, quinceañeras… Truly, it’s such a wonderful and unique idea that would make any event memorable and end with a special memento. But then the world changed. Group events stopped happening. I started numerous prototypes for the day we could gather again but it was too depressing in the face of all our uncertainty. But maybe we’re finally taking a turn for the better. Maybe we can celebrate with each other once more. So, if you want to add some awesome, interactive, collaborative, celebratory art to your upcoming event my schedule is open (for now).
