Photos by Kevin Seng. Full gallery below.
Last Saturday, Phone Booth Gallery hosted another one of its community favorites, a live painting event. Hosting only a handful every year, the gallery sees great local support from an event that revolves around watching a selection of artists create live, in person, in front of a crowd of attendees.
The event, which was the last stop for the Long Beach Post social media scavenger hunt and arts month kickoff, featured six artists, all Southern California locals.
Julius Tanag, a CSULB grad and local sign painter created a single-color custom typography piece from scratch. Craft fair specialist and gallery artist Sienne Diaz created an aged portrait of a bearded old man, complete with freshly picked roses which the artist taped to the gallery wall for reference.
Prolific illustrator Ian Williams recently created event posters for Blink 182 and The Pixies, but decided to go a little more painterly for the event with a skull mixed with smears of color for a unique and signature final look.
Further down the wall, a Phone Booth Gallery live painting veteran David Lee Owen exaggerates an expressive caricature of the “Godfather of Soul” James Brown.
Inspired by the no-rules approach Brown offered in his compositions, Owen followed suit. This was Arlene Asuncion’s first live painting with the gallery, though she showed in a group exhibition earlier in the year. Asuncion is known for extravagant and detailed graphite drawings mixed with splashy and vibrant watercolor, she took the figurative approach to her painting. Ahn Tran, also a live painting newcomer, rounded out the live painting lineup with a stylized portrait in Acrylic paint.
A raffle was held through the course of the event for all the paintings that are created. At the end of the evening, all the paintings were raffled off and profits split between the artists.
The work will remain on view through October 19 at Phone Booth Gallery, located at 2533 E Broadway.
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