It Starts Here

I work in marketing for a real estate company. Solicitations to purchase advertising or sponsor a non-profit come to me. This week I received the Art Unleased (AU) packet. It is a fund raiser by the Forsyth Human Society (FHS). I immediately recognized the idea – life size dogs and cats figures decorated by local artists.

The city of Dallas did a similar thing while My Geek and I were there in the form of a Pegasus. I remember walking downtown, touching each one of them and thinking how cool it would be to be a part of such a project. What fascinated me were the proportions, the 3-D canvas and the fact that they were installed downtown for everyone to touch and see. I love the idea of the audience and art being interactive.

Here’s the idea. The FHS purchases life size, plain white fiberglass forms of dogs and cats. Artists in the community are asked to submit design ideas for decorating the forms. All of the designs are put into a portfolio. FHS also seeks out sponsors who are willing to contribute to the cost of the project. For their contribution, they get advertising and are allowed to select a design from the portfolio. Not all of the designs in the portfolio will come to life if there are not enough sponsors. That’s the competition. Be good enough to get picked. (To see some examples done by other cities, got to CowPainters.com.)

I looked on the FHS’s web site to find out, per chance, if they were taking art submissions and they were! But the deadline was in 8 days! This is insane. I couldn’t possibly come up with something in such a short amount of time. I made myself a deal. If I could come up with a solid idea in 24 hours, I would go for it.

I’m amazed, sometimes, at how creativity works. Sometime I might tell you the unusual path that has brought me to art but, for now, let’s just say I’m a late bloomer. My modus operandi has been to attempt any creative contest that is reasonably possible. Not in the hopes of winning a prize or getting displayed but out of the need for experience and motivation to stay creative. I struggle with staying productive.

So, I was amazed that I actually had three ideas that I loved. One was a mosaic. I love mosaics because they remind me of puzzles and anyone can do it. I had, what I thought was an original idea for a mosaic but I would put bets that there would be other mosaic submissions. The second idea was to paint a realistic meadow of flowers with sky, birds and bugs. It was a play on a dog running through a field. The idea was in my head but my confidence was lacking. I didn’t think I could pull it off. Besides, I adored the third idea.

I had to draw my design on a picture of the dog form that was in the packet. It was only a ½ page size so I blew it up on the copier. My design was fairly detailed so I needed a bigger canvas

To boost my confidence I called Stephanie, the AU contact. I told her that I had just found out about it. I asked her if I could drop off my submission at the shelter on Sunday. She encouraged me to submit a design. She said they were finally getting art submissions. They had been trying to get the word around to artists for about 3 months and were starting to get nervous because they hadn’t received any response. But about 2 weeks before the deadline, frantic calls started coming in.

Hesitantly, Stephanie said, “Artists are kind of….”.

“Procrastinators?” I finished.

“Yes.”