Squid Pro Quo

A couple of months ago, Matt Brown bashed the heck out of a bunch of old computers to create what he calls "robotic sculpture." This time around, he and several cohorts are constructing a humongous papier-mâché squid. This is the sort of creative otherness you'll experience at Brown's event The Giant Show: House of Flying Paint II, scheduled for Saturday, August 20, at Alice Cooper'stown.

Brown is a promoter/scenester best known for his affiliation with the Tempe Art Walk, and he's a man on an artistic mission. His goal is to cross-pollinate the local art and music scenes with his cool, ongoing series of multimedia shows.

Flying Paint I, held at the Big Fish Sports Club in Tempe, featured 15 artists and several local bands. Flying Paint II ups the ante with 30-odd artists who will create art on the spot, plus five musical acts -- locals Attack of the Giant Squid, Simplfy, Cigar Box, and Mossy Rocks, as well as the national touring act ReVel -- providing an aural backdrop. Artists who will be displaying and selling their wares include Tara Miller, Jay Fail, Glen Allen, and J.J. Horner, along with graffiti artists Tyson and Mix & Rachel. (A detail from Miller's work is pictured.) "We're going to take the dungeon at Cooper'stown and turn it into a big art gallery," says Brown.

The ultimate point of the show, and the series, he says, is "to educate people about art, which is not just about throwing paint on a canvas. It's about how a painting is actually made." Not to mention robotic sculpture and giant mollusks.