From dust,to dust

Initially a commercial muralist whose clients included the famed Caesar’s Palace Hotel in Las Vegas,and The Borgata in Atlantic City,Stum drifted to street art in chalk as she was bored of painting murals. That was thirteen years ago. Since then,the artist has gone on to create anamorphic street art. “Anamorphic street paintings are illusionary two-dimensional images that appear to become three-dimensional when viewed from a fixed point through a camera lens. I find that it enhances the performance quality of the piece and creates a direct connection between viewer and artist,” says Stum,who has created exact chalk representations of several paintings of the Italian Renaissance,as well as her own quirky concepts,such as playing Chess with the Dalai Lama and of Napoleon breaking out of a painting. Incidentally,she holds a Guiness Record for the largest street painting by an individual,a work that measured 10 m X 5m.

Stum,who even makes her own chalks,says she cannot allow herself to form any attachment with her work,even though many of them take her a long time to complete. “As a street artist,the first experience is to know that your art is not for yourself. By the time I’ve completed a painting,I am tired of it. I take a photograph,document the effort and don’t ruminate over the impermanence of my art,” she says. When she’s not bending over a sidewalk or a street,she works as a designer for a carpet manufacturing company and saves all her abstract designs for them. “The public usually respond better to a realistic design or painting than abstract and the purpose of my art is to bring it to the public,” says Stum,who will complete her piece at the Habitat this evening.