Lexington, KY - In August, artist Madelaine Enochs-Epley posted this on Facebook: "Is anyone interested in doing one-hour sittings for me in my studio? I intend to do a series of one-hour portraits. In return, I can offer a delicious cup of coffee talk."
Assuming no one would respond, she went back to the cup of coffee she was drinking at her kitchen table and wondered what she would do with the rest of her day. By evening, 20 people had responded.
The vague plan of painting one-hour portraits and the overwhelmingly positive response on Facebook propelled Enochs-Epley to design the project 500 Faces. Her plan: to spend 500 hours painting 500 portraits that will hang at the University of Kentucky Neuroscience Institute Art Gallery for six months. The project will conclude with an enormous outdoor yoga class.
What do Facebook and portraits and yoga have in common?
According to Enochs-Epley, the answer is easy: people and community.
"I love people. I could just go and sit and watch people all day," she said.
And by community, Enochs-Epley intends all the definitions of community: a group of people who live in the same area, a group with a common background or shared interests within society, and the public or society in general.
She also uses the word "community" to mean
"connectedness."
She chats with her subjects as she paints their portraits. Until recently, most of her sitters have been friends or friends of friends, along with other people that she may have met along the way. But as additional people find her on Facebook, she is painting more people she doesn't know personally - friends of friends of friends - and she finds that often they know the same people, or their children know each other, or they went to see the same bands in the '90s.
"I'm starting to know that really we are just all connected in really deep ways. This has really taken beneath the layers of our community," she said.
Enochs-Epley frequently updates her Facebook community with posts such as this one from Aug. 27: "After today, 40 people will have graced me with their presence. Each person for one hour offering the gift of their expression. How cool is that?!"
Just as we are beginning to tire of the endless posts about boozing and baby tricks, political rants and bikini bragging on Facebook, a project like this comes along to remind us of the value of social media. Enochs-Epley has found a way to utilize Facebook for a flesh-and-blood, face-to-face meeting between participants in a worthy arts project.
Subjects make arrangements with Enochs-Epley to sit for one hour for a portrait mostly through Facebook messaging. (She is quick to point out that making the appointment on Facebook isn't a "rule." In fact, there aren't many parameters to the project. The only rules are that she must paint 500 portraits, each must only take one hour to paint, and the subject can't see the portrait until the show opens.)
Enochs-Epley invited me to have my portrait painted for this project. We made the arrangements, and I arrived at the door of the one-story Cape Cod off Nicholasville Road that houses Enochs-Epley's studio, along with the home of her and her husband, Lewis Epley, and their two children. Stepping through the front door, I ran smack into a petite, paint-covered easel and an equally paint-covered, tall, excited and beautiful artist.
Wasting no time, she seated me just inside the door and turned over an hourglass to keep the time.
As she painted, Enochs-Epley kept a steady conversation running, with an occasional pause to study my face. At first, I found her scrutiny disconcerting, so I chattered nervously, but eventually I began to feel as though her looking at me meant she was hanging on my every word. And I began to talk about the things that are really important to me.
She claimed that most people tell her their stories and that this is her favorite part of the project. In this way, she comes to not only paint 500 faces but to hear 500 life stories and to know 500 members of her community.
Enochs-Epley's real trick will be to lead these 500 new friends in one enormous outdoor Anusara yoga class.
She explained how the yoga class completes the project: "For seven years, I have been studying and teaching Anusara yoga. Anusara is insistent on the power of community, the power of community as a way to recognize the light within ourselves."