MEAR ONE’s Live Art Experience: A Brief History of Live Art in the Artist’s Own Words
I began my adventures in Live Art back in ’96 with my friends who had formed a hip-hop underground collective, The Breakestra. Each night I would let the music and the energy from the crowd influence the direction of my subject matter. I started out with chalk pastels, which led to markers, which led to found objects with air brush and paint, which finally led to working with my acrylic paints directly on canvas, as I would in my studio, but amped up to 100 miles an hour. I would usually be on stage acting in as a band member, playing the art form, sometimes turning the canvas upside down and starting over, and constantly changing it and evolving it throughout the show. I ended up becoming part of the weekly event, performing on stage with different underground hip-hop groups like my good friends, The Freestyle Fellowship.
During the years 1998-2001, I would paint weekly at Spaceland in Silverlake, where I discovered my own personal style and techniques that I’ve evolved with in my Live Art. These techniques are quite different from painting a mural with spray paint, or sitting in my studio where I laboriously work things out on my oil paintings. Fast-tempoed club music consisting of hip-hop, dub-step, and electronic dance music seemed to run at a bpm (beats per minute) that worked well with my brush strokes per minute. I find myself caught up in the repetitious beats with my repetitious rendering of different shapes, like the buildings I create, or even some of the characters I map out. I’ve also found new techniques of repetition in myself because of music’s bpm. Once I begin to paint with this music, it hypnotizes my gestures and it causes me to jerk back and forth or begin to create spiral after spiral of repetitive shapes, continuously flowing along with the beat, knowing all along that somehow these shapes and repetitious forms are going to form an image.
I coined the term Live Art back in 1996, with the idea intended that it would be a Freestyle experiment that would need, in a sense, audience participation and the high energy of live musical performance to really summons up the type of physical energy and vision to take on a large scale painting without a sketch, in the presence of potential hundreds. The complexity of working out undrafted ideas in front of people creates a serious challenge that I’ve always felt comfortable with since I’ve done graffiti on the streets as a young teenager. Painting publicly comes with public conversation, and constant interruptions, questions, and judgments cause you to hone your style tighter so that every stroke is a completion. Whenever I prepare myself to perform a Live Art piece, I have to clear my mind and take the environment and the evening and the sound of the music into consideration. I also have to take into consideration the world conversation, politics, and interject what I feel passionate about so as the piece is not just a commercial concept, but it serves as a conversation between me, the canvas, and everyone else, live in the moment.
Live Art’s experimental challenges offer me a complex puzzle to work out, which I enjoy as an artist. Doing Live Art causes me to stay focused and concentrated in the moment with a completion with every movement I create. Time restrictions and people’s attention span also create a challenge and I think that these pressures cause new abilities to form in how I paint and what I’ll actually try to pull off. Being in front of so many people, and feeling their anticipation to see something interesting and entertaining and have them wonder while I’m wondering, and keeping them focused on what I’m doing causes me to be a better artist in my studio life. It’s a practice like martial arts. It requires a level of respect of the art and dedication and commitment to completing the piece. Doing Live Art has caused me to explore the usage of new tools such as sharp plastic wedges, soft silicone chips, natural weeds, rags, and my own hands. I generally treat it more like an engine rebuild of some mechanical ritual than sitting down and carefully painting a pretty piece. I literally carry my supplies in a tool box and it is a very industrious experience, whereas I leave the location covered in paint and I feel very much part of my environment.
It’s hard to find a hip-hop or electronic music festival today that doesn’t have live art painters, and watching most of them is about as active and interesting as watching paint dry. As a pioneer of the Live Art scene, I feel the Live Art that I create is my own art form, and it provides a richer experience than the many live painters that have followed in my path.
