Year Four -- Check

Achy knees -- check
Sore thighs -- check
Hurting hiney -- check
Lower back pain -- check
Tender shoulder muscles -- check
Painful fingertips -- check
Complete satisfaction of a job well done -- check

For the fourth year in a row, yesterday, I participated as an artist in a street painting festival, Via Colori, to raise money for the Center for Hearing and Speech. It was an exhausting day of art WORK, and will include, as an added bonus, a few days of sore muscle recovery....all for a good cause.

Some new friends dropped by the festival, little suspecting that they would be recruited to help fill in some background color. (Thanks Julie and Mike!) Notice the reflective stripe of the street running through the painting under the ukulele, and a small portion of the grid pattern is still visible.

The Amazing Reese helps before the event by editing a photo of a painting and super-imposing a 10" x 10" grid pattern over it, which we then take to Kinko's and laminate. When we get to the street, we mark off a 10 foot by 10 foot square (also known as 100 square feet) and use the gridded painting as a guide for the day's work. That's how it's possible to get proportions mostly correct on such a large scale.

A couple of young neighborhood friends came to help. These young girls were very good at following directions and helped fill in the background for the table top, and some of the draped blue sheet. A passing comment was made, and randomly enough, these two 7 year olds (and I) were discussing, of all things, fame. One of the girls said, "What do you want? Do you want to be famous?" How would YOU, gentle reader, answer that question? My reply is marked by an asterisk at the end of this entry.

By mid-afternoon, the nagging thought occurred that I was literally starving from hunger. What better way to enjoy the festival atmosphere and replenish sapping strength than to devour a turkey leg? Mmmmm.

My blog buddy Joyce and her sweet family came to visit, too. Young David was quietly studying every aspect of the technique of the process of applying a pastel chalk drawing to the canvas of an asphalt street. Maybe his future includes street painting. Notice also, that I'm getting filthier as the day progresses.

And here is the finished product. By this time, Reese and I were among the last participants to leave the festival. Technically, it should be called Still Life With Ukulele -- 4.

Here's a link to an article that has already been written and very graciously mentions me alongside other Houston artists.

It was great to see the article's slide show, too -- working so hard all day I missed the opportunity to fully enjoy my fellow artists' work. And by the way, that's me in image #8 of the slide show!

If new readers would like to see past Via Colori participation, click on Nov 2006, Nov 2007, and Nov 2008 in the right hand column of this blog.

On a more personal note, the Friday before Via Colori was my 46th birthday. Imagine my surprise when I opened a gift at the restaurant only to find an enormously huge goldfish inside a plastic bag filled with water. Want to help think of a name besides Gigantor for the fish?

*Thoughtfully and carefully, the reply seemed to come from deep within, " I want to do good and be kind." Young Mary (name changed to protect the innocent) seemed satisfied with the response.