Take multiple Tennis balls and different color paint cans, put the canvas in the middle of the room. Give the artists multiple gloves to be able to pick up and roll the ball across the canvas of different colors. If everyone is alright they may bounce the ball to each other assuming they dont mind getting paint on themselves. The idea originally came around when my friend and personal trainer Kevin Brewerton showed me a video of him doing art with his boxing gloves and punching the canvas with paint on his gloves. I wanted to take a step further and try throwing a baseball or hitting a baseball against the paint however many things can go wrong so quickly with that. Baseballs can deflect and hit someone, not enough space to protect the whole area from getting splashed. I then thought about doing something similar with throwing a tennis ball between two people against the wall but there’s still the potential of breaking the canvas and also dealing with covering up as much ground so we won’t get paint everywhere.
What is needed for the happening:
- Tennis Balls (six for this Happening)
- Tempura Paint (Blue, Orange, Red, Green)
- Paper plates to hold the paints
- Disposable Gloves to help handle the tennis balls
- A giant Tarp to paint on and also prevent the ground or room to be painted on
- MISSING: (19in x 24in Paper as the canvas)
- Tarp became the new Canvas
The results of the Happening: Lack of preparation for the Happening resulted in many changes to the final presentation. Didn’t have a place to prepare for the project nor could I get the tarp that I wanted to stay on the wall. The solution to this was to lay the tarp on the ground and instead bounce the tennis balls covered in paint. The results are shown here:
The tennis balls ended up soaking up the paint and not splashing as much as I wished there would be. I had fun with the idea and it would be a lot of fun to potentially take this idea and reserve a room, get a ball that will splash more, and have the liberty of chucking the balls at full force without worrying about damages. I find this can be a fun way to relieve stress by doing physical while also making art through your own physical actions.