Art Babble

Hey! So last Saturday I was in an Art Battle. That's a pretty fun sentence to say.

I covered the lead up to it pretty well in the last post but just to quickly go over it again; it was Third Drawer Down's 10th Birthday and to celebrate they had a big party. One of the main events of the party was a series of Art Battles. 

The Art Battles consisted of pairing five local artists with five Arts Project Australia artists, (an organisation that mentors and provides exhibiting opportunities for artists with mental disability).

The 5 pairings made for five separate Art Battles, in which two artists worked on back to back easel's with twenty minutes to paint a picture of the same object. The works were then put into a silent auction with all money going to Arts Project Australia.

The artist I was paired with, Eden Menta, chose a red inflatable pool ring designed by American artist Kenny Scharf as our object to paint. 

Kenny Scharf's been a big deal in New York since the 80's. He does colourful paintings and sculptures in a graffiti kind of scale and style, inspired by cartoon characters.

Another fun fact I like about Kenny Scharf is that he used to be roommates with Keith Haring. Here's a photo I found on google of the two of them with Andy Warhol. 

I hadn't heard of Kenny Scharf until I had to paint his inflatable but since then I've done some basic research and I've decided that I love him. (If I had've known about Scharf earlier I would've included him in my list of Twenny Kenny's).

But so ok, the Art Battle.

The crowd was surprisingly really big and it all started very quickly. Someone in a later battle was caught in traffic and suddenly Eden and I's battle was moved forward an hour. Having no time to get ready was probably a good thing, it meant that I also had no time to go to a public toilet and vomit up Mum's spaghetti on my sweater already, you know, like how Eminem prepares for battles.

I was nervous, but on the surface I looked calm and ready. 

Here I am mid battle.

And here's Eden and I at the end of the battle with our finished works.

Third Drawer Down put the above photo onto their instagram and Kenny Scharf himself actually liked it, how cool is that?! 

So I guess Scharf and I are pretty much BFF's now.

As well as the Art Battles though, the other awesome thing at the Third Drawer Down 10th birthday party was that if you spent ten or more dollars on the day your name went into a hat and if it was pulled out then you got a turn in the Art Grabber.

The Art Grabber is one of those things like you used to see in old tv game shows. It's a small room you go in and high pressure fans blow pieces of paper all around you and you've got ten seconds to grab as much as you can. 

As soon as I saw it I decided it was on my bucket list. Amazingly, at the very moment I was talking with someone about the idea of asking if I could have a turn in it just for fun, my name was actually picked out of the hat!

Here I am in it. 

 

Desperately trying to catch the prizes in the Art Grabber was a lot like the time in year 12 when I hadn't yet stapled my english essay together and after putting it on top of my car to get my keys out of my pocket a big gust of wind blew the 8 loose pages onto the freeway. 

A side note, I later realised that the little boy watching me in the foreground of the above photo is wearing the exact same clothes that I do. Look!!!

So it's official; I'm exactly as stylish as a seven year old.

But so alright, what's almost as amazing as that little boy's very fashionable outfit is that here's the five things I won in the Art Grabber...

Here I am with the stuff.

And here I am again with Eden, and also another Arts Project artist, Aiden Sevo, who later battled Oslo Davis.

Oslo killed it, that guy is so damn good. Aiden's piece was great too. Their theme was banana. 

Here's me eating a banana, while Oslo and Aiden draw somebody dressed as one.

It would've been good to have taken a few more photo's but after a week of pouring rain and barely leaving the studio I was just enjoying myself too much being out in the sun. 

If you are interested in more photo's from the day though click here to see 32 more photo's taken by The Thousands.

Anyway, I just want to say congrats to Third Drawer Down for putting together a day that was not only heaps of fun, but also raised over $1500 for the very worthy cause of Arts Projects Australia. Incredible. All of the Art Battlers were great artists and great people and I feel really lucky to have been a part of it. 

One final thing to end this post is that when I got out of the Art Grabber and read aloud the list of the things I'd won I didn't know how to pronounce the Rose Nolan ruok candle. 

The three people around me all had a go at it too and we decided that Oslo was probably the closest with 'roo-ock'. 

Later that night I went out for dinner and asked my friend to google 'ruok'. "How's it spelt?" they asked, and it was only when I pronounced the individual letters that I finally understood it and felt really silly.

And so, in the Ferntree Gully Hotel with a pot resting in my new Jon Campbell stubby holder and my new David Shrigley tea towel as a bib, if you were to ask me 'ruok?' I think my answer would have to be 'yeah, everything is good'.  

Anyway I hope urok2, and everything's good for you as well.

 Thanks so much for reading.

And yes, of course, please feel free to use that last photo as the background image on your phone.