Many Hands Make Art Work

By Rachel Beckman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, August 17, 2006

Outside of Gallery Neptune in Bethesda on Friday night, four artists sat at a long table across from four models. One of the models wore a crisp blouse and pink lipstick and held a closed-lip smile for the full 20-minute sitting. Another model was a little girl with blond Goldilocks curls who could barely sit still for the whole session.

Luckily for her, she didn't have to.

Five minutes into the session, artist Rob Stelboum signed the bottom-right of his drawing, put down his pencil and said, "Okay, that's it. Switch!" The models took their unfinished portraits and moved one seat down the line. Now each sat across from a different artist who would start drawing on top of what his or her colleagues had already begun.

"Being an artist is usually a private relationship between you and your art, and you don't want to give that up," Stelboum, 48, says. "But here, we're giving up control over the work. . . . You learn so much. You stretch so much."

Stelboum, Brandon Bloch, Alex Slater and Ming Zaleski make up a group called the 4traits. They've done these assembly-line portraits in public about 10 times over the past two years, plus lots of informal sessions in Dupont Circle cafes or outside the Barnes & Noble in Bethesda.

Elyse Harrison, owner of Gallery Neptune, saw the 4traits working at a July event at the Gallery Restaurant & Lounge in Silver Spring. She had so much fun watching them draw that she invited the group to her gallery for the Aug. 11 Bethesda Art Walk.

The 4traits usually give their work away, but Harrison thought they should put a donation box on the table. At the end of the night, they'd collected $135.

Bloch was charged with the task of finishing the prim lady's portrait. Somehow along the way, the picture ended up with a comic-book-style, black-ink upper lip and a light pink, colored-pencil lower lip. He had five minutes to make this portrait jell. He shaded the lower lip with a pen to make it match the rest of the mouth. He used a toxic-smelling silver marker to draw her long, straight hair. When Stelboum yelled, "Time!" Bloch handed the portrait to his happy customer.

"Problem solving," he says, as he stands up for a five-minute stretch break before four new models come sit for their portraits.

The Art of Dance

Last spring, Brandon Hill was flipping through a book about performance art and was cracking up. He and a friend were reading a chapter about a man dragging a woman by her hair and proclaiming it Art. They decided they could do better.

Hill, a 22-year-old Baltimore resident, is the art director for a group that creates paintings by break dancing on canvas after soaking their hands and feet in paint.

"It's still pretty big," Hill says. "We get together to paint every other week, and if we're not meeting up, it's because Peter [Chang] is at a jam." Chang is one of two break dancers in the group. The other two do art direction and shoot still photos and video.

Since October, they've created a body of work called "The Document," which debuts at the District of Columbia Arts Center in Adams Morgan tomorrow.

The four men paint in marathon sessions that last about 10 hours, including Burger King breaks. They typically start at 1 a.m. because they aren't technically authorized to use the studio they work in. They have to "keep it quiet," Hill says.

The group has two approaches: freestyle and choreographed. For freestyle, Chang cranks up his favorite hip-hop and funk and lets loose on the burlap or dropcloth canvas.

For the choreographed pieces, Hill comes prepared with sketches of color patterns he wants to try.

"There's a large amount of unexpected things happening, but there are some things that can be controlled," Hill says. For example, the group knows what a six-step pattern, the foundation for all break dancing, looks like on canvas.

The resulting abstract paintings are like the love child of a Jackson Pollock painting and a Levi's ad: frantic streaks of paint and prints from hands, shoes and jeans pockets.

Chang's paint dancing isn't the same as his break dancing.

"It's slippery, so the movement isn't as fast -- especially right when you get on and the paint is most liquid," Chang says. "You slip and slide everywhere." Chang is a member of the crew All Ways Rockin' that often practices in Dupont Circle on Sundays.

Videos and photos will also be on display at DCAC so viewers can see the process. The break dancing context gives the art new meaning, Hill says.

"Have you ever seen those paintings made by elephants? If you glance at it, it looks like a 4-year-old made it. But when you find out an elephant made it, you're blown away. . . . We were amazed by what we were doing."

See http://www.myspace.com/4traits for upcoming 4traits events.

The Document is on view tomorrow through Sept. 3 at the District of Columbia Arts Center, 2438 18th St. NW. Free. 202-462-7833.