Planning for massive street painting event starts tonight

A massive public art project kicks off this evening at 5:30 p.m. with a community meeting in the Lecture Hall of the Art Academy of Cincinnati, 1212 Jackson Street in Over-the-Rhine.

The Fine Arts Fund is looking for suggestions and design ideas for "Paint the Street", a street painting party that will use 12th Street, between Main Street and Central Parkway, as its canvas.

Scheduled for September 26 as part of the fund's second annual "Ta Da" celebration, the painting's design will consist of individual pieces of art with a unifying pattern that ties them all together.

Hundreds of volunteers are expected to fill in the "paint by numbers" artwork, which is expected to break a world record.

Lightborne will capture the event on video, which not only will be posted to such sites as YouTube and Facebook, but will also be used for the fund's annual Campaign for the Arts in 2011.

At tonight's meeting, Michaele Pride of the University of Cincinnati School of Architecture and Interior Design will moderate a conversation that also will include this year's artists – Matthew Dayler and Danny Babcock of Higher Level Art; and Pam Kravetz, Carla Lamb and Karen Saunders.

Individual and group volunteers can sign up on the Fine Arts Fund's website.

Photo courtesy of the Fine Arts Fund.