Portrait of My Father
Saturday, June 16, 2012
10am to 2pm
Street artist Brad Downey looks to the sky for his first project in Atlanta. This aerial banner project will be visible throughout Atlanta, and more details on locations will be released in the coming weeks.
Portrait of My Father will feature a cloud taken from an old photograph of Downey’s father piloting an airplane. As Downey explains, “even today when I think of my father I imagine him somewhere in the clouds looking at vast landscapes imagining how slow the rest of the world is moving. For this reason I see this work as him. The portrait is not just the cloud but also the plane and the pilot.”
Downey continues, “I have always found the movement of fabric or material blowing in the wind one of the most beautiful sculptural forms. Likewise, clouds are always changing and moving. Even while photographing a cloud it can disappear before your eyes. A photograph of a cloud captures a moment when that cloud has an exact shape. It is kind of like grabbing the image out of time, or arresting its motion.” Portrait of My Father will take a photographic image, further change the form of the cloud into a material that this durable, and reintroduce this cloud in a new, sculptural form back into the sky, its original context.
