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Halloween and Shelter Recap

November 12th, 2008  by Blaine Garrett

[singlepic=90,320,240,,right] I know this comes a week or so too late, but I figure I better get a recap up of Halloween since it very well could have been one of the best ever. For the past few years, I have not done much planning for my Halloween costumes. When I was a kid I used to plan for months and make some really cool costumes (well for a little kid anyway). The last few years, I have just slapped on some makeup at the last minute before heading out for the evening. However, this year, Halloween was on Friday and DIMMedia had a live painting gig at Shelter downtown Minneapolis again. So well in advance, I knew I wanted to do something special. My friend Anya often teased me that I looked like Wolverine from the Xmen, so I decided that I might as well go as him this year. [gallery=7] In August, I started growing my beard and hair out. In the mean time, I ordered some "bling" in the form of a X-Men logo belt buckle and some authentic Canadian military dogtags. I fashioned the claws from plates steel. Originally, I planned to have the claws retract, but I waited until the last minute to make the mechanism and sorta gave up at the last minute and just ducttape the claws to a pair of gloves. Arika did my hair up based on Hugh Jackman's portrayal. I even worked out quite a bit more to gain some extra muscle - hey Wolverine ain't no scrawny dude with a pot belly. hahah.I'll let you decide for yourself if I made a convincing Wolverine. Anywho, the night of Halloween, Joe (who went as Andrew W.K.) and I made our way to Shelter and set up. We decided to pin a 9 foot piece of canvas to the rig I made from the previous shelter gig. We also had a small stretched canvas going off to the side. Since it was Halloween, we decided to do an amalgamation of monsters in our respective styles. We started off with quick charcoal drawings. Joe then switched to making the lines stronger with ink and I started filling in with the fluorescent. It was a really awesome dynamic working with Joe since we have never collaborated on the same piece before - something I always envied with Charles and Joe working together normally. As the night progressed, the music and booze and general atmosphere kicked in and made working a blast. Unlike the last shelter gig, I had energy the entire evening and was actually a bit sad when 2am bar close rolled around. The Shelter had both rooms going with DJs and the place was packed. Also unlike last time, people were coming up to us telling us how much they dug our work. The whole thing was very surreal with everyone in costume and getting painty. There may have been a bit of body painting going on, but luckily I didn't end up killing anyone with my claws, even though I did slash Captain America's cardboard shield. haha. [gallery=8] Anywho, aftwarwards I went to an after party at Jobot's studio and chilled to some more techno djs. I finally made my way home at 5am or so and pretty much slept the next day until the Beastie Boy's concert.. However, that is another story altogether. All in all, best Halloween ever! A special thanks to Zak, Shelter, and Barfly for letting DIMMedia do their thing. Word. Some related links:

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