Does anyone have the scoop on Via Colori?
I've heard 3 different dates and rumors that it will be on canvas instead of the street.
I've heard 3 different dates and rumors that it will be on canvas instead of the street.
The Walton Funn October 10, 2007
The Year Via Colori Went Terribly Wrong
Visitors and residents of south Walton know and love the annual Via Colori, or Italian street painting festival that occurs in Seaside every fall.
None could have guessed at the controversy and drama that unfolded at this year’s event.
“Well I’ve been watching those great Simon Schama’s Power of Art shows on PBS, and have been inspired by the way all the great artists thumbed their noses at the establishment.” said artist Rob McNeil.
“So I recreated a version of Michaelangelo’s Creation of Adam in fusili and penne pasta.”
“Some have asked if I was Divinely inspired,………..I believe it was more Al Dente inspired” “But the difference is really just an exercise in splitting Angel Hair Pasta……….”, McNeil explained.
Critics were not impressed.
Other artists went off the rails in other ways. Brian Minch chose to paint his square using bits of doggy-doo picked up from the Beaches of South Walton. “I’m trying to make a statement”, Minch went on to explain, “either people clean up after their dogs or I will rub their haughty art loving noses in it…”
Artist Catherine Baker was less controversial, choosing to represent a Seaside streetscape with the use of a Lite-Brite board.
Tacky art mediums aside; the final slap in the face to Via Colori came when artist Bill Foster painted a work he entitled, The Triumph of Suburbanism -a scene showing bulldozers plowing Seaside under and replacing it with modular tract housing and strip malls.
Seaside representatives expressed a concern with the ‘lawlessness of the art’ at this year’s Via Colori and indicated that next year’s event will be more tightly controlled with the establishment of a New Urbanism Art Code which will set clear guidelines for subjects and colors to be used.