Ready: A 3-D Coloring Book
A Participatory Art Event at Big Umbrella Art Studios in San Francisco, March 7, 2009. A collaboration with Kacie Erin Smith and about a hundred others: we invited attendees to paint, decorate, and adorn a collection of primed, wacky sculptures. Music and merriment ensued.
"Ready" as a concept comes not only from the fact that these pieces were ready to be transformed, or just that the audience was ready and up for the challenge, but that we as a community are ready for change and evolution, coming together and examining the way the we interact with ourselves and our environments.
"Ready" itself is an ever-changing event; this, our first one, was about breaking down the barriers between artist and audience, and maybe more importantly between art and life. Everyone is an artist, and the art here is not the sculptures before they were painted, or even after they were painted, but the activity of painting itself.
There is a quotation attributed to Pablo Picasso that goes: "Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up." Ready is about getting back to the tremendous, unchecked creativity and wisdom we have as children, and fostering it that in everyone we can.
