Erie Times News

TRYING TO CONTROL CHAOS" IS how Brad Ford describes Sling Paint, a unique participatory-art experience setting up shop at Ninth and State Friday through Sunday, from noon to 8 p.m.

Ford has taken concepts developed by Jackson Pollock and expanded them to encompass an entire community of painters, with results that are always unpredictable and never dull.

Ford suspends blank canvases, then gives his audience — participants must be age 16 and over — carte blanche to paint them at will with the tools and pigments he's provided.

Sometimes, they use brushes and rollers. Sometimes, squirt guns or even various parts of their bodies.

"I'm 6-foot-5, so I can pick up most people," he slyly warns — and he's not above doing just that, then using his victim as a human paint brush.

"Heads, hands, butts, feet" — it's a good thing he uses washable Crayola paints, especially since, he says, "if you stand within five feet of the canvas, you will get paint on you."

If you don't want to actually participate in the painting, just stand back — well back — and enjoy the show.

"Even if you just stand there, you'll see something you wouldn't ever normally see," Ford says.

At the end of the weekend, he guesses there'll be some 25 completed canvases that CelebrateErie can use as gifts or to raise funds.

This will mark a homecoming for Erie native Ford, who now lives in Salt Lake City and works for a PR agency there. He developed the Sling Paint concept in Utah about three years ago, and when it debuted at the 2003 Utah Arts Festival, he was presented with a silver award for best new event.

Now he gets to come home and make more than just a proverbial splash.

"It's fun and random and chaotic," he says, and a great way to make painters of us all.
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