Saturday in the Park with Friends Painting Seurat on the Rock River

Initial information and photographic results from this Saturday afternoon attempt to make George Seurat's famous painting, Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte come to life with real people (Friends of Riverfront) on the banks of the Rock River in Beloit.

The weather cooperated beautifully with one glaring exception... the wind was ferocious... which kept things cool but shredded at least two umbrellas.

A Beloit Daily News article by Ann Montgomery reported on the event itself and included a photo. That article appeared in the Monday, July 3rd edition - Art is alive along river.

I hope other photos from other photographers will appear online soon. I can't wait to see what John Spates and Jim Simonson took. Jim's got a nice collection of photos of the crowd and participants.

The BDN article announcing this event was published on Wednesday, June 28th: Life imitates art


A great Seurat reference is the Seurat Biography at Olga's Gallery.

(My son was working at Walgreens' photo lab yesterday and processed film from three people immediately after the shoot. He was probably the first person to get a good look at the results. Ya just gotta love small city living!)

Addendum - September 2006:

The reason we shot the scene in the first place was to make something to use as promotional material for the Saturday in the Park with Friends event scheduled for August 12th. (And it turned into something we did not foresee, but greatly appreciate.)

Photo of the promotional poster on the big screen:
Can be seen here.

The outdoor feature movie - The Wizard of Oz - capped off that day's events.

Link to Beloit Daily News article on Saturday in the Park with Friends event.

Thanks to comments made on Flickr, I discovered quite awhile after this event, that there is a name for this kind of photo - Tableau Vivant (Wiki to use in photography).

18 photos | 35,915 views

items are from between 22 Jun 2006 & 12 Jun 2007.