Hi everyone,
I have recently returned to the USA after spending a week in Dubai with international street painting artist Rod Tryon who is working on a series of bright jungle themed street paintings for the Dubai Shopping Festival (DSF) for my other company, Art for After Hours. The planned street paintings are for toucans, parrots, jaguars, and monkeys with snakes in the jungle settings. Our post today will show the ‘Parrots’ 3-D illusory street painting that Rod did when I was there.
The Dubai Shopping Festival is a fun event with many artists of different types doing great work, entertaining the passers-by. There is Ricardo - a sand sculptor from Australia (shown below), an artist team creating a racing horse from tires and metal, a group of German art students creating beautiful art from found objects, and an artist who does interesting art by balancing rocks in unique ways one would never expect. Especially, there is the beautiful, temporal work of an artist from Singapore who creates her work from rice powder and rice pieces in bright, vibrant, colors.
The backdrop for us is the Jumeirah Beach Residence, an exciting area with international dining, beautiful weather, a stream of sharp cars, views of the Arabian Sea, and of course, lots of shopping, spas, and even a cigar store/lounge!
Rod’s 3-D illusory street painting ‘Parrots’ piece is very bright and colorful, drawing the attention of people at all times of the day. Rod was interviewed for a lifestyle program on Dubai 1 TV, where he discussed his street painting and his 3D art work.
In the evening we were able to catch these Indian dancers which were fun to watch.
The architecture here is incredible; it’s almost like building Manhattan from the ground up! And of course the weather… And not for the reasons that you would expect. Yes, the weather for the event has been spring like for us freezing in the Northeastern USA but it has actually rained heavily with some thunder and lightning one night. Who would have thought there would be measurable rain in the Middle East? Now we know…
Our hosts have been very good to us and our fellow artist friends and we are having a great time. I should be back in Dubai later next week to show Rod’s finished street paintings to everyone attending the DSF until the conclusion on February 15th.
We plan to do another post or two before I fly back, so stop by again for more from Dubai from Blog Now on Streetpainting.tv.