Michael William Kirby belongs to the elite group of artists who are in demand all over the world but remain rooted to home.
“Basically every young guy wants to do graffiti,” he said of his initial attraction to street painting. “I did graffiti work in sewers in Herring Run Park and really enjoyed drawing paintings on a large scale.”
During the past week, Kirby painted a three-dimensional crab feast with homemade pigments on the corner of Aliceanna and Exeter streets for today?s Second Annual Harbor East Fine Arts & Music Festival. His expansive 15-by-15-foot mural is tiny in comparison to the 30-by-150-foot epic on Pocahontas he recently painted in Virginia.
At 19, Kirby took a leap of faith, traveling to Europe and then Mexico with his life savings and parents? support.
Since then, he?s painted the streets of more than 200 cities including Rome, Paris, London and New York.
He?ll continue to leave his ephemeral mark around the country and on international lands, but Baltimore is his permanent home, he said.
“In Europe, the loneliness gets to you. [Baltimore] is a very supportive area for me because I have so much family here. I?m always traveling, but I?ll live here until I die,” he said.
In addition to Kirby and other well-known artists, the Fine Arts & Music Festival will showcase local favorites such as Ellicott City sculptor Dave Hardell.
Hardell bends steel rods by hand before cutting, welding and spray-painting the metals to form “faces and everyday objects with a twist,” he said.
The artist plans to add 100 metal works to the festival?s offerings: jewelry, pottery, paintings, sculpture, glass, Japanese textiles, mixed media and photography.
Among the 70-plus artists attending the fest is native Frenchman and emerging photographer Ollivier Girard.
Black and white photography, an intense medium, shows “more details, marks and emotion,” than color images, he said. “I like to see the story on faces.”
Living with subjects before capturing their faces and moments is a must for the artist, he said.
“I feel very deeply attached to people?s lives, of their respective histories, of life itself,” he said.
IF YOU GO
Second Annual HarborEast Fine Arts & Music Festival
» Where: Harbor East, Aliceanna and Exeter streets, Baltimore
» When: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday (Raindate Sunday)
Price: Free
