Creating Space for Experiential Expression in Creative Collaboration and Interaction Through Paint, Dance, and Conversation

This last week I had the honor of hosting a unique birthday experience for someone I know. She wanted to spend time with her friends on her birthday in a creative way that would express not only her personality but give her the chance to interact and collaborate with them in community. Knowing that I am an abstract expressionist artist and that I have experience with various kinds of experiential artistic expressions (and have taught splatter painting workshops to small groups)...she came to me for help. Together we brainstormed and both contributed supplies and came up with a really fun experience for her and her friends to celebrate her birthday. 

I was able to create the space for them in my back yard to collaborate and interact creatively through paint and dance and conversation. Real simple...a couple of canopy tent skeletons, clear plastic, drop cloths, tarps, unstretched canvas, tempera paint squirt bottles, plastic drums with sticks, paint brushes, music, a washing up station...and some refreshments. And though I gave some instruction at the beginning and did enter into the fun on occasion...this was an experience mainly for her and the small group of friends she had invited (they were friends who have spoken into her life in various ways and she wanted to bless them with this creative experience).

This was the "Paint Palace"

They started out drumming paint onto a canvas on the ground. My friend and I got the idea from a scene in the movie "Miss Congeniality" where Sandra Bullock and the other beauty pageant contestants go to a club that features neon paint poured onto large conga drums that they could drum along with tribal music and get paint splattered everywhere. We modified the idea to fit this very specific setting and the group of friends she invited to experience it with. 

Over a few hours they continued to drum and also splatter painted with squirt bottles and danced on the canvas to the music. 

There was also an unstretched canvas that we hung on the canopy so they could splatter paint on that too. 

This is the floor canvas which features their footprints.

This is the hanging canvas which features their handprints.

There was a moment where we all let my friend spend some time alone in the Paint Palace to dance and express on her own. It was so fun to watch her let the paint be her the expression of her heart.

Here are the finished pieces...which she is going to make into curtains and hang in her living room as a colorful reminder of this unique moment she got to collaborate with her friends. 

At the end of the night she gathered them around a smaller stretched canvas and they spent time painting it together as she spoke words of affirmation to them, thanking them for who they are and how their friendships have blessed her. 

It was a beautiful moment. 

The evening was beautiful! I was absolutely undone that I was given the opportunity to create the space for this kind of intimate creative collaboration and interaction between friends. 

After getting everyone's feedback on what they experienced and how it impacted them, I am seriously thinking that I might figure out a way of offering this sort of creative interactive experience as part of my revelatorART business.  There are some logistics I need to work out to make it more efficient and cost effective...but I think it could be something fun to offer as a service for small groups wanting to interact together in a unique and creative way. 

It's different than a painting lesson or a workshop...it's an interactive creative experience of expression. 

What do you think?