THE COSMIC SERPENT
Solar & Wind Powered

The Big Draw Chalk Drawing Festival
Pleasanton California USA
~Mark Wagner: Lead Artist

The BIG DRAW was an Arts Festival in Northern California. It was another beautiful festival that involved a city street being closed down for some chalk drawing to raise some money for the local arts. I was one of the featured paid artists and looking forward for laying down some lines and colors on the street.

I often come up with my design a few days before the event which is how I prefer to work, the work is fresh. I’d been recently inspired by the Cosmic Serpent Project that is a National Science Foundation (NFS) funded  project between The Indigenous Education Institute (IEI) and the U.C. Berkeley Space Sciences Laboratory (UCB).

It’s a collaboration that bridges Native and Western learning, between western science and Native wisdom. I was recently chalk drawing at the Space Science Lab (see blog post below) and thought I would continue and create my own Cosmic Serpent. Pleasanton CA is filled with high tech and science geeks, so I though I would bring in alternative (alter – native) energy  to the artwork – solar and wind power.

I’ve had a metal pin for years and thought it would be good reference with it’s  form and shadow. I opened the image in Photoshop and worked the magic adding solar panel and wind power after looking for reference on the web.

And then it’s show time. I arrived Friday afternoon and slowly applied a grid using a chalk line and square by square roughly sketched out the piece that I had printed. The festival put me up for the night in a local hotel and Sat. morning I was back on site. My teen artist crew arrived, 4 girls, two of them mine – and they were going to be on the clock as paid artists.

We worked all day. Well.. actually it got really hot and the girls wilted like flowers and by mid day they were pretty much spent and I put them in the shade. They were great help and fun to be around. One of the girls only showed up the day before with her dad. He mentioned that she was too late to sign up to draw with everyone else in the festival. I said “you can work with us!” And she did and it was really good for her, I could tell. I paid the teen artists, they all agreed that they didn’t work as much as they has signed up for so we renegotiated the fee and everyone was thrilled.

It’s super important for artists to get paid. I no longer work for free, been there done that, it’s silly really. The work that we do on the planet, keeping the arts alive, keeping the creative spirit flowing is so important – I’ll save you my rants. The festival was very impressed that I had a teen crew and that they were being paid.

The day was long and after the girls left and the festival started to close down I kept working. At this point all the hard work is done and the piece takes on a life of it’s own. The Cosmic Serpent was now embodied with creativity. The artwork was a renewable source of creative energy.

At this point I get the play, experiment, explore, draw outside the lines. I was the last artist to leave the site. People had gathered around my piece. I let kids work near by and even dumped a mess of chalk near so people could keep drawing. I packed up, moved my truck, and was going to find some food before I left. I walked back to the site to get a few more photos and met more people, that’s part of the experience – all the interested people that happen to come along. Kids and adults. I meet 2 sets of women who all “got down” and did some drawing, one was a mother who drew the names of her 3 grown daughters as they watched and were thrilled – that was awesome!

Creative Blessings,

~MW

www.ssl.berkeley.edu

The Space Science Lab has more satellites (6) than any other Universities in the world – really cool to get into this room!

Our chalk drawing was short, 3 hours plus, but it was sweet.

Laura Peticolas, Director – Center for Science Education

C on left, Berkeley student in the fall, astrophysicist, her grandpa helped make the Hubble Space Telescope. E on right, 6 grader, she was so comfortable talking to an adult, broke her foot on a trampoline. The two girls bonded while drawing – so cool.

The dad had tears in his eyes, sounded like he and his son were not connecting and this had them doing something together.

Riley and Tara, totally cool kids, great parents. I sent them home with chalk. Tara keenly listened to everything I was talking to her mom about – totally great teaching moments, just makes everything worth it 10 fold.

The Lab is working on a bridge program with indigenous leaders connecting space science to ancient wisdom.
Called the Cosmic Serpent, thought I’d combine it with Earth Day.

Namaste Boston from the California Bay Area.
~drawingonearth~

Gratitude Train – Chalk Drawing

Dedicated to the Boston Marathon Tragedy
By Menlo College Art Students
4.15.2013

The kids and community there in the outlaying areas were super poor. I realized that me just being there was a way for them to get supplies to make more art when they went home, and that would even impact other siblings and their parents. That brought tears to my eyes.

I also ran a master 3D workshop for professional artists from all the regions in the country. Excellent collaboration and teaching experience. I taught them everything I knew and then they went back and taught others. Perfect!

OK, we kinda had fun! Memories for a life time!

]]> http://www.drawingonearth.org/brought-tears/feed/ 0 http://www.drawingonearth.org/new_world_record_attempt/ http://www.drawingonearth.org/new_world_record_attempt/#comments Mon, 04 Feb 2013 22:18:41 +0000 admin http://www.drawingonearth.org/?p=1144

My new friend Elinor Slomba emailed about their town and school’s idea of attempting to beat our world record.
I said, cool, use me as a consultant, I’ll share with you everything I know.

~Mark Wagner: Founder of Drawing on Earth

What: CHALKVILLE!!

Why: Because every kid (not to mention the kid in all of us) wants to get into the Guinness Book of World Records…West Haven, Connecticut, is a warm-hearted community of creative citizens with a civic infrastructure and cultural assets yet to be recognized in the state and region. As a community, West Haven can break the World Record for the Largest Street Pavement Art and be totally AWESOME about it.

Where: West Haven High School, West Haven, CT
When: July 10-15, 2013
Who: Chalkville’s Core Planning Team
Gwyneth Evans, Registration Leader
Mitchell Gallignano, City Relations Leader
Joan Glass, Education & Outreach Leader
Courtney Tracey, Design Leader

Core Team and City Relations Squad: Wed July 10 for site prep (sweeping and clearing of debris, setting up, etc.)
Artists and Design Squad: Thurs July 11 for laying down grid lines with contractor’s chalk
Community Groups and Outreach Squad: Friday July 12 for filling in big blocks of the drawing
Student Co-Chairs & Invited Speakers Saturday July 13 10am for Public Welcome and Opening Remarks
Public/Registration Squad/Design Squad: Sat-Sun July 13-14 for extreme chalkdrawing till complete
Everyone: participants & spectators: Monday July 15 for Clean-Up and Viewing Party, with live music & other performance 1-4pm

Special Assistance From
Richard Kasperowski, Lead Technology/Agile Adviser
Mark Wagner, World Record Consultant, www.drawingonearth.org
West Haven Council on the Arts, Fiscal Agent

How: To find out how to register and/or volunteer, visit Facebook.com/chalkville.
Funding has been provided by the Awesome Foundation, Connecticut Chapter. Donations for additional chalk and other supplies may be sent to:

Chalkville
c/o West Haven Council on the Arts
PO Box 16513
West Haven, CT 06516

At the conclusion of the project, surplus chalk and other supplies will be donated to West Haven High School Art Department. Any remaining cash on hand will be donated to the West Haven Council on the Arts.

Let’s break a record!!

Elinor Slomba
Chalkville Project Leader
(203) 812-9093

“Street Painting & Burning Man:
Creating Community Through Impermanent Art.”

Founder and Creative Director of Drawing on Earth will be speaking at Stanford Dec. 12 with the LASER Series.

Dec. 12 (12.12.12) 6:45pm, Stanford University, History Corner (Building 200), Room 305

SEE BURNING MAN PHOTOS OF MW’s WORK

The LASER (Leonardo Art Science Evening Rendezvous) series began in January 2008 as a local forum for presenting art and science projects underway in the Bay Area. The Bay Area LASERs now alternate between San Francisco and Silicon Valley (both chaired by piero scaruffi), and a parallel series started in 2010 in Washington DC (chaired by JD Talasek). LASERs have been held in New York and Hong Kong. The mission of the LASERs is to provide the general public with a snapshot of the cultural environment of a region and to foster interdisciplinary networking.

Each evening, free of charge and open to the public, presents up to four artists, scientists, philosophers, historians, inventors and scholars who are working on paradigm shifts. Each evening also allows the audience to socialize and encourages people in the audience to briefly introduce their work.

This just drives me crazy. As a professional artist and visionary this has got to be one of the worst things we can do to our kids, to our families, communities, state, nation, and world!

What we want to be doing is creatively nurturing our youth, especially when they are young. When they are still open, in the magical zone, and not closed or damaged. It’s not about the product of art, it’s about the process of creativity that we want to anchor into their beings so that they grow up to be free, alive, able to cope with any and everything… in their work, relationships, inner lives, and the stuff that life throws at them. We want to educate them to be in their bodies, not just in their heads.

So that… they can creatively interact with life, so that they can co-create their lives with the rest of nature. When you are creative you can “always” choose. If not, the choice is made for you by not choosing. Make sense? Get Creative! Help save the World!

GOT CREATIVITY?

A year at Franklin Elementary. Ideas, lessons, art, and reflections.

Link: ArTist in RESiDencY

But I can show you some photos and hook you up with them on Facebook.   (apologies for not having photographers credits)

Carolyn Schultz

Internationally known Kurt Wenner and crew.

Leon Keer