Circus, Fire & Sketchy

A nice young Yale student did an article in the New Haven Independent about last Thursday's happening. Read it here.

The video is an example of me performing while distracted by organizing, and getting a nice little rain of fuel fire. I need to figure out how to work with this situation, because it is likely here for the long term.

Dr. Sketchy & Fire Show

I am really proud of this one. The Advocate newspaper asked me to gather up Polly Sonic's Fiery Circus again for a music night they regularly curate during the Ideat Village fringe festival in New Haven, and this time I also added an outdoor Dr. Sketchy and New Haven Circus Collective happening.

We narrowly missed a tornado a few miles south of us, ended up with blue skies and an incredible turnout of spectators, volunteers, sketchers, street performers, fire dancers, and TEN beautifully dressed models. I found myself managing a real three ring circus, but I'd luckily put my most trusted allies in charge of each ring with an inspiring number of friends willing to help, and found we could create a pretty fantastic event together. A reporter there who's been following Sketchy and NHCC kept asking me as I ran manically around the plaza "So would you say tonight is the birth of the Circus Collective?" I kept dodging him, until the end, when I finally stopped to look around and realized "Yes, yes it is!"

I brought out my little circus set again and it's getting more Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus as I add to it. What I really want is a small cart that can unfold like that...

Great photos below by William Skrainski, J. Adametz, and ElizaB. More here.

around the edges

Yesterday I ran 6 of the wood paintings down to the Scion set up in front of Koffee. There was no place to hang them except for 2 lamp posts, and then they turned into true street art, which has been in my mind all the time I've been making them. Here is me, badly in need of a hair cut, a little bit rained on, still queazy from bad chicken, and tangled up in my Festival gear. But I like my new glasses, and am really happy about the paintings being out in the world. They are there again today from 11-7.

And if this wasn't enough, tomorrow our third annual Polly Sonic's Fiery Circus is at the Ideat Village fringe festival in Pitkin Plaza at 9pm, with 7 fire performers this year. Plus, a Dr. Sketchy's session with a dozen models and roving street performers encouraging everyone to draw. Pictures below of me, Pam Terror and Nicholas Ridiculous from last year by Mike Franzman, JoAnne Wilcox and Meg Fama.

SCION = SONIC

I am the featured artist of New Haven for the Scion x-CHANGE program, which is touring the country raising money for local arts organizations. They'll be at Koffee on Audubon Street with my Nag Hammadi wood panel paintings from 11-7 on Tuesday June 22, and for every car test-driven they'll donate money to Music Haven. I'll be there at some point too, between driving artists for the International Festival of Arts & Ideas again (which has been terrific) and getting over food poisoning (which has been not so terrific).

fire pony

And here it is, burning magnificently: