Unsilent Night! Come do this thing!
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Tonight was the first workshop at Backstreet Arts for those who would like to decorate a lantern for the upcoming Unsilent Night in Newnan. I had a blast, and you should be there. It's way more fun than I anticipated — and I anticipated it to be plenty of fun.
What is Unsilent Night? Short version: it's a musical soundscape performance piece, using four overlapping new age music pieces by New York City composer Phil Kline. You download one of the four pieces, provide yourself with a way to broadcast that, then show up at the Greenville St Park here in Newnan on Fri, Dec 1, before 7:30. On the command, you hit play, and we all walk uptown for about 30 minutes, ending up back at the park. (Full details here. There's a Facebook group here.)
AND there will be lanterns to boot! Every Wed night in November except Thanksgiving week, you can come to Backstreet Arts on First Ave, 7:00–9:00, and decorate a lantern to carry in the promenade — for free!
No, you don't have to be artistic. Look at this:
This is a crappy little star I cut out of tissue paper. It is one of several crappy little stars that I cut out, then pasted onto the paper lantern with a liquid matte medium. (Full disclosure: the matte medium is like school glue. You will look like a leper for hours.)
We also have watercolors and markers in addition to tons of tissue paper, and we have lanterns from 6" across to a gargantuan 20". So if you can think of a motif (stars, holly, angels, bells, music, elves, reindeer, snowflakes, stripes, random shapes), then you can decorate a lantern.
You don't have to be neat in your design or execution. Remember: these will be lit by a glowstick and carried on a stick above spectators' heads. No one is going to get a close look at your crappy lantern!
And talk about ABORTIVE ATTEMPTS/GESTALT/SUCCESSIVE APPROXIMATION! Since you're just feeling your way towards a spherical display, you will be astonished at how freeing the process it is. See those pink swirls on my lantern? I just decided that the lantern needed them. So I made them.
You'll find yourself developing ways to make your work faster (especially as you begin to fill in the background!). You'll find yourself looking at the lantern and slowly finding out what it's going to be when it grows up.
And you'll find yourself planning your next lantern. Mine is going to use a painting of an angel by Nancy Willard that she did in one of my copies of William Blake's Inn:
Join us! Backstreet Arts, Nov 8, 15, and 29. Email unsilentnewnan@gmail.com for details.
