THE EVENT:  This was the 2nd Annual "UNINHIBITED" exhibition held by the Paper Heart Gallery and the theme was Sex, Drugs, and Rock n' Roll.  In addition to my bodypainting demonstration, the event featured live acoustic musicians and the band Quarter Inch Crown, works by Denise Fleisch and Kristen Wright (photography), Jimi Girdner and Denise Grimes (acrylic on canvas), JA Jurewicz and Cheryle Marine (mixed media), and the owner of the gallery, Scott Sanders (oil on canvas).  The previous year's event also included a live bodypainting by owner Scott Sanders, but this year he decided to hand over the reigns so that he could concentrate more on orchestrating the event.  Fortunately he was aware of my work through my past demonstrations at the Alwun House's annual Exotic Art Shows.

THE VENUE:  The gallery is located in the heart of the downtown Phoenix art district and is a part of Artlink's First Fridays:  A self-guided tour of the inner city art galleries held on the first Friday of every month.  Paper Heart also has a strong internet presence and can be fount at www.thepaperheart.com .  The site includes live webcams so you can see what's happening from the comfort of your home.

THE MODEL:  I was very happy when Anna Lieb accepted the assignment to become my canvas for the evening.  Anna's beautiful images can be found gracing some of the top internet modeling websites, but her official websites can be found at www.annalieb.com and www.annaprivate.com .  Just weeks before this event, Anna had taken first place in the international Model Safari Contest for Mystique Magazine.  Anna was wonderful to work with and was very patient in light of the fact that she had to be still for upwards of two hours and she had to keep drinking hot tea to keep from getting too cold.  Anna is originally from Sweeden and has an absolutely charming accent.  Hopefully we'll work together again sometime.

THE PAINTING:  In keeping with the theme of the night, Sex, Drugs, and Rock & Roll, I decided to paint a Gibson Les Paul guitar on Anna.  The night before the show I took out my own Gold Top Les Paul guitar and traced around it to make a "go-by" pattern for the painting.  I was confident that it would work, but I found out that it is very difficult to make a flat pattern cut-out conform to the glorious female form.  I traced it as well as I could and then began adding the wood grain effect with brushed-on Mehron liquid make-up.  Next for the starburst, I used Ben-Nye liquid make up through my Badger 150 Airbrush.  The rest of the details were added with an assortment of bodypaints and the project was wrapped up after about two hours.

THE PRESS:  944 Magazine's associate editor, Sarah Seider was on hand with a magazine photographer.  The article that she wrote was printed in the subsequent issue of the magazine with my photo of Anna.  Scroll down to read the article below.  Also during the night a photographer was on hand from Alice Cooperstown who plans on adding the shots he took to a video montage of the downtown arts scene.  Photographer Ben Kee of Siegel Photographic, Inc. was also snapping pictures throughout the night for use on The Paper Heart Gallery's What You Missed web page.

Photo of the work in progress by photographer Ben Kee

Here is last year's event with gallery owner Scott Sanders doing the bodypainting