Face Off at the Urban Gallery

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At the beginning of June, I somehow discovered an event near my home that sounded like a lot of fun. The Face Off at the Urban Gallery was to be an event in which nine local artists would be given 18 hours to create masterpieces on 9 garage doors outside a place called Neighborhood House. I really wanted to go and so I took my two youngest, my neighbor, her dog and a dog we were tending and we went off to check it out. We like it so much we went back two more times!
I took a lot of photos and had plans of posting them all but decided to limit it to a few and post a slide show of the rest. When we arrived on the first day most of the garage doors were in the very early stages of being painted. We watched for awhile as the artists painted - mostly with spray paint. You can see the beginning photos in the slide show. When we returned the next day most of the doors were in their final stages. We watched as one artist put up an enourmous stencil and sprayed away with black paint. When the stencil was removed we discovered he had painted a large black gorilla with a phone in it's hand. Amazing.
I returned a few days later and took photos of the final paintings.
Here is one of my favorites:
I was so glad I went early and saw that she had started out this painting with very light colors all over the entire door. My neighbor really loved all the light colors and was disappointed when she returned the next day to see that the artist had added the darker colors. My neighbor spoke with the artist and found that she is a scientist and that all of her paintings are dark because this is how space looks. It was fun to hear why her painting looked like this.

My girls and I loved these two doors as well.

This three eyed puma is very attractive.
On the second day of the Face Off The University Museum of Fine Arts and the Salt Lake Arts Center had paper and oil pastels for the children to create paintings of their own.
There was also a taco cart and a booth with wonderful looking tamales.
I was really wishing I hadn't eaten just before we went. *drool*

This is the door I voted for. Did I mention they were holding a $1000 viewers choice award as well as a $1000 juried award? When I first saw the owl
I thought it would just be a great looking owl,
but when it turned into a mechanical owl
I was pleasantly surprised and decided to vote for it.

In the end the painting to the right of the owl ended up taking both prizes.

I don't know who the artist was portraying
but it is a very nice painting.
The texture in the beard and mustache is wonderful.
I am looking forward to going back next year
to see what the next set of artists come up with.

Comments

Jane Babcock said…
Sounds like a fun activity. I'm glad to know you are interested in such stuff -- a potential parter to explore with.
June 23, 2009 at 1:45 PM
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