Art Show Plinko

This past week, St. Luke's Lutheran Church hosted an art show!  

The show was designed to be an opportunity for art students from Pratt (located across the street) to connect with local artists from the Brooklyn community through showing their work together.  As a result we had an eclectic mixture of about twenty artists showing paintings, photographs, and sculpture throughout the sanctuary and parish hall.  We even had a silent film projected on the sanctuary ceiling and a performance by Zombi Jazz.

(This string of paintings is by Ari Dallas, who also runs Happy Doggs, a dog-walking company)

(Despite the awesomeness of the sculpture, people seem more interested in the food)

I, of course, could not pass-up the opportunity to do some interactive art.  So I retooled Christmas Plinko for a day-time art show.      

The glow-sticks were replaced with golf-pegs and the glow paint with screen printing ink.

This time, when participants dropped golf balls covered in paint down the board, they would win prizes of suggested random acts of art show kindness such as "ask a stranger what their favorite artwork is," "ask an artist what inspires them," and "complement an aspect of an artist's work."  "Point out something amazing to a stranger" remained unchanged from Christmas.

The visual art turned out much stronger with the screen printing ink than with the glow paint. 

Particularly up-close

The social art was harder to judge.  Because I setup outside of the art show to draw in passersby (and to avoid splattering paint on the floor), I couldn't really see how people carried out the prizes that they won.  However, there were some great conversations as clumps of people played who were either leaving the show or stepping out to smoke!  And while the art show was a great way to get the community (and the congregation) to think about the church building in a new way, I think that the most meaningful connections didn't happen during the show, but beforehand as artists helped each other set up their work.