Interactive Mural: Meditation on Loss

This is a mural that I created for the Southside Hub of Production, held in Hyde Park, Chicago.
For more info:
http://southsidehub.org/

I hope, if you are in the area, that you could check it out and interact with it!

Info:

INTERACTIVE MURAL: MEDITATION ON LOSS

MARIA-CONSTANZA GARRIDO

About:

This piece is dedicated to cherishing life and appreciating the people we know. The only fact we know when we are born is that someday we will die. Death is a transition from one dimension to another. For an artist, letting go of the pain and sorrow that the loss of a loved one entails, means to let go of the paint and the painting and allow others to participate in the experience.

Instructions:

Below, you will find finger paint. Open the containers and start getting your fingers dirty. Paint on the pattern, with any color you prefer and on any shape you like. No worries, the bathroom is on your right.

About the Artist:

Maria-Constanza Garrido is a Chilean born, cosmopolitan and polyglot by nature, deeply inspired by the works of fine arts masters such as MC Escher, Vasarely, Klimt and Van Gogh. MC Garrido has just exhibited paintings in Moscow, Russia. In the past, she has worked as an interpreter/translator, production /costume/set/interior/industrial designer. She is a published photographer for Magaz Magazine, has acted in plays and films in Greece, Egypt and the US, and has won a bike rack design competition in Egypt with 350.org and Nahdet el Mahrousa.

September, 2011 – MC Garrido

CC-BY-NC-ND

Video & music :
Robert Beshara

Recycling does wonders

A couple of weeks ago, when in Hyde Park, Bob and I found a chair. It was dark, it was cold, the poor old chair was left alone in the side walk, for the trash men to take. The chair was is a bad condition, the upholstery was torn, the paint was coming out, the screws loose and the overall looked nasty. This is how we found it.

The old lady looked quite crooked, and needed badly a remake. The wood was still in good shape though, and the Asian style of the chair made us fall in love with it.

So I showered it!

I washed all the dirt and took the cushion part off. It had spiderwebs and lots of dust.

We left it to dry for a couple of days, the wood went back to its shape. I painted it white and varnished it. I sewed a patchwork of fabric samples I had left from some Interior Design work, and hand sewed the whole thing. I needed to find some softy new cushion, when I realized I had bought a pound of fabrics at Purl Soho, it had some white felt in there and used it as the cushion!

I had some  tiny nails left over and hammered them to the wood, and fitting the fabric. The neighbor didn't like it. I hear her banging her ceiling with a broom. So I screwed the rest, less noisy. And this is the end result!

Some landscape fabric patchwork!

Don't just throw a good chair away, try giving it a second life, a new use and a good make over. 

You and the chair will appreciate it. 

Enjoy!