Catalpa Music Fest 2012 Recap…

I just got back from a crazy weekend in NYC, at the 1st Catalpa NYC Music Festival. Months back I got asked by Catalpa to do some promotional ads (publication sheets, street & subway ads, etc.) for the event which blanketed New York for months. I didn’t realize how prevalent they were until going around the city myself this past week. It was awesome to see.

About 2 weeks ago myself & another artist (Alan Maser) were asked by Absolut Vodka to partake in an event going on during Catalpa in which we would design two 4 ft. bottles at their booth, essentially paint for 5 hours and design one a day. Originally it was supposed to be one 8ft. bottle, which would have been really interesting.

Below were my concepts for the 2 bottles. The idea was to make complimentary images that people could kind of stand inbetween. I ended up using spray paint, acrylic and paint pens.

Day 1

The first day started well but kinda turned to shit as huge rainstorms put a damper on the Festival and kept washing away my acrylic work. I had to wait long periods for things to dry and kept having to repaint areas that smeared.

I ended up painting a lot longer than 5 hours but was able to finish the “girl” before the headlining act, The Black Keys, came on.

Day 2

The second day went a lot smoother as the weather was pretty stable and having already done one bottle was more confident in the amount of time the 2nd one would take me. I originally created some stencil to help me w/ sizing but slowly ended up going more free form.

Done and done…

I believe the bottle were taken to the Absolut office in NYC as they are starting their own collection. It was fun to do and something I dont do all the time but would love to do more of. Alan is a street artist from Dublin and plowed through his bottles..