Clark Park's art show a hands-on event

Some art is meant to be seen, contemplated, admired from afar. But in Clark Park on Sunday, viewers were encouraged not only to touch the art, but to become part of it.

The park hosted more than 40 artists for Philadelphia's first Figment festival. The two main rules: Exhibits had to be free and collaborative.

On one side, two ladies gave out love advice. On another, people competed in an air-guitar contest. There was a keyboard made of bananas, a wacky bike with rotating bowling pins, and a yarn-weaving station.

On Chester Avenue, a man with cerebral palsy had a paintbrush strapped to his head. As he looked left and right, the brush swiped green and black paint across a canvas.

"Keep it straight. Any movement he makes, that's it!" art teacher Eiko Fam said, admonishing Darnell Fisher's caretaker not to move the canvas for him. "We're aiming for something pure here."

Corrine Fogg, 38, of Ardmore, walked away with a bright canvas painted by her 7-year-old daughter's feet.

Fogg is from England, where she said it's rare "to see people with disabilities out and about, painting or participating like this."

Another popular exhibit was "Dead Jim," a large nylon horse that took quite a beating during the six-hour event.

A South Philadelphia artist called Miss Fidget encouraged people to write their frustrations on a piece of paper, put it in Jim's mouth, and then hit him with a blow-up bat.

"I think frustration is an extremely underrated emotion," she said. "It's one of our earliest experiences as a human being. It's universal."

Leah Moore, 9, of Germantown, got the concept immediately.

"Ahhhh, you stupid!" she screamed, dropping body blows on poor Jim.

Afterward, Leah said she felt better. "My frustration was about how people never listen to me," she said, turning back to face the horse. "Thank you for listening even though I whacked you."

Cole McIntosh, 6, and his father, Sean, had been all around the park, but Cole kept gravitating back to the trapeze artists.

He jumped up and grabbed the bar, and the artists helped him press up into a lateral position.

"Point your toes," said Erin Flanigan, an aerialist with Cotton Candy Circus. "Remember, we squeeze everything, squeeze the butt cheeks!"

"I like hanging upside down," Cole said afterward. "It's fun."

David Baxter, 36, of West Philadelphia, said he would have participated if he had found out about the show earlier.

"Instead of doing caricatures, I draw peoples' souls," he said. "An elephant dancing with some old man on a rooftop. . . . A car making love to a squirrel. I just look at them and whatever pops into my mind."

Ryan Mareck, 28, went to the park to do his molecular biology homework. He wasn't looking for a quiet place, which is fortunate because Clark Park sure wasn't quiet.

"It's exciting, whatever is going on here," he said, watching as children looked through the peepholes of a giant cargo box. "I'm not sure what's inside that box, but it looks intriguing."

Leah Moore could answer that for him.

"There was, like, little trolls and a little troll town," she said. "It was a happy little place."