subZERO Festival, June 2011

The subZERO festival is not a street painting festival; instead, it's a one-night annual art and music event in the South First (SoFa) district of San Jose, a "diy, artistically bent, hi/lo-techno mashup where street meets geek." It featured musical groups on two stages, bodypainted dancers, art cars, knitted trees trunks, open galleries up and down the street, hip street food (karaoke ice cream and korean tacos, anyone?), and all sorts of booths for artists of all sorts. We came to help promote the Luna Park Chalk Art Festival in September. Our subject of the evening's painting was a dinosaur fossil, set up so that it looked like we had unearthed it under South First St. that day. We had a full crew of people working on the painting, including Katrina Loera, Ann Sherman, Manny, Pinky, and Sean. We had an excellent support crew, too--especially Steve Gordy and Chris Jones, who manned the information table and handed out brochures about the festival and a July workshop.

We got the pounced image transferred to pavement by 5:30 or so, then worked steadily until around 9:30. Steve and Katrina had brought lovely bright LED worklights for us, and the threatening rain didn't appear until 11:45 PM, just in time for us to close up the booth and go home. Katrina also brought a big box of sidewalk chalk, which proved popular among the passersby. The area in front of our information table was filled with spontaneous artwork.

First chalk on pavement--the dinosaur jaw. Note pink knees from the pouncing process.

Wayne explains street surfing while Ann, Manny, Cheryl and Carlos painted.

Manny and Ann work on vertebrae.

Say Aaaaaaaaah...

A close view of the process.

This lady with a video camera came up and started asking Cheryl questions out of the blue (she didn't identify herself). Meanwhile Katrina worked on dinosaur fingers.

This passersby was suitably impressed.

Pinky proved to be ambidextrously talented.

Her big brother was having a good time.

So was she!

Manny, Pinky, Katrina, Wayne and Sean hard at work as dusk falls.

The area next to us began to fill with art.

Katrina, Cheryl and Manny keep on chalkin'.

Don't fall in the hole!

Paleontologist Pinky prepares the specimen.

The view from the top.

The rain began, showing the limit of our pop-up tent...but the painting (and the festival) was complete.

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