Pat Lee’s live comic-style art show!

Despite a heavy rain on Saturday evening, a large crowd gathered in front of Pacific House to watch as accomplished comic book artist Pat Lee illustrated a scene on an exterior wall.

Using a combination of markers, paint brushes and spray cans, Pat created different textures and shades in his monochromatic work. The time-line to cover the entire wall was just two hours. From a little after six to shortly after eight he worked non-stop. Which super-heroes and famous villain made it onto the wall?

It was the first time that many in the crowd had witnessed comic art take form before their eyes – especially on such a large scale. Pat worked on Batman first, then the Joker followed by another villain and finally Spiderman.

Besides the rain, perhaps the big crowd made it even more difficult. Surrounded by onlookers, Pat was working just a few feet away from the wall which gave him very little perspective as he was painting.

The turnout for the event was strong, in part because it was a collaboration between Diesel, who are opening a new flagship store at the location and the artist networking site Alive Not Dead.

Alive Not Dead, which bills itself as a community of artists, has built a major presence for itself in just under a year. (Artist in this sense means anyone involved in entertainment or other celebrated industry.) Their claims of building an artist network are irrefutable judging from the great attendance of the site’s members at recent events. What’s the significance? Picture a diverse assortment of actors, filmmakers, singers, models, bands, designers and d.j.s from the site all turning up at an event by a comic book artist… in the rain! This type of cross-industry support is unheard of. Not only is the site’s artist community powerful as a promotional hype-machine, but also as a way of building synergy between talents. It’s a brilliant way of artist helping artist, and the system isn’t just an abstract theory, it’s actually working already. For example, singers need videos, album artwork and clothing. On Alive Not Dead, they can easily meet one another and discover talent they’re interested in working with. Someone could approach Pat Lee about creating their next CD artwork. It also allows them to meet on an equal footing, for mutual benefit, without the messy politics and cronyism of entertainment companies and management agencies. Further it allows new creative types to be discovered. Leveraging a network in this way is not only efficient, it’s powerful and revolutionary.

The gathering had a community vibe to it that succeeded in creating a fun, party atmosphere. Even under bad weather conditions the event was crowded for the entire two hours. As Pat Lee finished painting the crowd broke into applause.

Who says comics don’t incite violence? The two Redbull girls got high on their own supply and started choking each other!

Will the real Pat Lee please stand up?

(Comic artist Pat Lee on the right, Alive Not Dead co-founder Pat Lee on the left.)