On Sunday I went to the Monster Drawing Rally. You may recall the huge fun I had last time I went (2008), which involved watching a lot of drawing in action, and then a bidding war for one of the pieces at the end. See the post I did on it here. Well, I went again this year. It was in Eagle Rock this time, instead of Altadena, with a slightly smaller (I think) space, but still good. [I was not there for as long as I originally intended, unfortunately, as there was a rather good birthday party the night before that kept me out until after 3:00am on account of lots of dancing and people singing around the piano (these people were good, so I stayed an observer). An early afternoon nap was therefore necessary, given that I had a dinner appointment later.] I got there at just before 4:30pm and there was a very friendly atmosphere and again a wide variety of people and approaches (and still nobody drawing monsters… 🙂 ) to the idea of just having lots of artists drawing in a five and a half hour long event. I trust you can read the earlier post for more detail on the organization of the event, or you can go to the site of the organizers, the Outpost for Contemporary Art, who put on the whole thing and who, once again, deserve a round of applause!
There’s something simply marvellous about an event that’s just about people getting together and doing simple, straightforward creation of art together at all levels, and I can’t help but love this event. That there are lots of children present as well, with plenty of space given over to them to get involved always warms my heart too. the stills show some of the tables with the artists at work during their shift. At the top right is an interesting four-hand effort on a drawing of some sort. I liked the collaboration, and that they are apparently using something on an ipod or iphone as a reference image.
I was not involved in a bidding war this time, although I did run into artist Mary Beth Heffernan (that bidding war’s winner) and we chatted for a while about the old days of 2008 and what she’s been up to in her art endeavours since then.
I made a short video showing some of the artists at work in the 4:30-5:30 session. It is on YouTube just for you and you can click and view it below:
Enjoy!
-cvj
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That could be a lot of fun! 100 Mathematicians doing mathematics for an afternoon, in one hour shifts… Awesome!
-cvj
(I wonder how many new theorems would result?)
Could people get together and do math like this? That would be special. (I do my bit with my grandchildren – the younger of whom, having seen his grannad at work, makes hundreds of tiny marks on a sheet of paper and submits them to peer review with a shout of ‘lovely sums’)