Arts Fest - Riley Duda

Riley Duda

Eric Roman 

Photo 100

16 July 2018 

To search for my art piece I decided to walk down Hiester Street - conveniently just down the hill from my dorm. As I perused the street I was first greeted by the “Little Art Alley”, which for a small fee of five dollars you have the opportunity to create your very own piece of art in a 14 inch by 14 inch square with a box of pastels (similar to chalk). I decided that I did not quite have the skill to create my own masterpiece so instead I admired the numerous amount of children creating whatever their hearts desired. 

I continued walking down Hiester and was greeted by even more pastel paintings (and lots of free food) that were hand drawn by artists from around the country. The paintings ranged from a rainbow Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to pixelated portraits of anonymous people - each were colorful and attention grabbing. When talking to a few of the artists that happened to be standing around I learned that Italian street painting has been apart of the festival for just about 20 years or since 1999. I also learned that this style of painting on the street using pastels is called Italian street painting and has been a European tradition since the 16th century. 

Finally, I came across a painting I found to be interesting and a little humorous. The painting had a white background with a hand reaching out, similar to Michelangelo’s painting “Creation of Adam”. However, there was not another hand reaching out to meet the first hand, instead there was the paw of what looked to be a cat. Along the bottom of the white box there was the caption “The Creation of Cattan”. This is when it all came full circle to me and I realized the picture was a play on words. The artist happened to see me smirking at the picture when he came over to greet me. When talking to him (I unfortunately did not come across his name) I explained what I thought the picture was trying to do. He smiled in agreement, excited that someone understood the humor of his picture. He went on to explain how he drew inspiration from the Italian painting the “Creation of Adam” because it is after all Italian street art. I then asked what I thought was the obvious next question, “Do you have a cat?” to which he replied with an enthusiastic “Yes!” We went on to talk about Arts Fest in general and I learned that he has been doing this for the past 7 years.