(upbeat music) - Thank you everybody for getting here on a Sunday like early.

I'm used to working with artists.

We run on AST, artist standard time.

We are never on time.

Today we're gonna do a spray paint workshop with a bunch of folks who have never in their life held a can of spray paint.

This is one of my favorite classes.

I love spray paint.

I'm Elizabeth Palmisano and I'm a local artist in Charlotte, North Carolina.

And I do public artwork, community work, workshops.

I love art and I love creativity.

You're gonna get comfortable with a can in your hand, right?

How do I use this thing?

Don't end up like me.

I'll tell you how this happens.

There's a brand spanking new can lined up every so often all the way down the fence.

So I wanna encourage everybody to take a spot.

I really love We Rock Charlotte.

It's a music and film nonprofit, primarily.

Their aesthetic is like graffiti fits right in.

It's really challenging to control spray paint when you first start using it, or even if you've been using it for quite some time.

Have a great time.

Give yourself over to the process.

Make a new friend.

So the spray paint that we're using today is not the spray paint that you'll find in your local hardware store.

It's actually professional artist grade paint that happens to be in spray paint form.

When you see folks doing murals with spray paint out in the community professionally, this is what they use.

It is incredibly challenging to control spray paint.

It kind of does what it wants to do, especially when you're first learning.

No one here is gonna leave a professional spray paint artist, but they're gonna get comfortable with having a can in their hand, holding it the right way, practicing safety, not spraying themselves or a friend in the eyeball.

- Really interesting techniques.

I just kind of thought you sort of pass it over and you just cover area.

But like that you can come up close to it and make those fine lines.

And like being okay with getting messy a little bit.

I don't like to get messy, so it's like out of my comfort zone.

(upbeat music) - If you've never done it before, people have a tendency to kind of just wiggle all around.

It's like, well if you wanna fill this area, here's the strategy on how to get a nice clean, we call it a fill.

It's becoming more well known maybe that a lot of muralists, people who paint on the sides of buildings use spray paint.

So I think there's an interest in that.

We have a lot of new murals around Charlotte.

People have gone and seen artists working on work and there's like a lot of intrigue.

- I've not ever really had much experience other than painting my lawn chair, right?

Or my tub.

So I thought that this would be a cool experience.

- I found out about it from my friend, Joy, who's here.

She's like, hey, my friend hosts these like, graffiti spray painting classes.

And I was like, that sounds awesome.

And my son is really into art.

So I thought it would be fun for the two of us to be together too.

- Well that would be my initials, J C. And then I kind of just did a bunch of extra stuff afterwards.

I just kind of like that I can pretty much do whatever I want and like I can express myself.

- People will try things that I haven't thought of before.

Especially with spray paint, I use a lot of stencils and we'll use found objects as stencils and hold it up against the wall and spray.

Does anybody know what this is?

- Crispy?

- No.

- Paper plate holder.

- Paper plate holder.

- I enjoy the technique that I'm learning.

The stencil technique that I've learned and you know actually how to make the letters, you know, so I'm learning that it is a specific technique to doing that, right?

- [Elizabeth] I have learned things from my students.

It's their first time, they try something new, I'm like, you know what, you're onto something there.

I'd like to try that too.

If one artist was painting 60 feet like this, it would take a couple of weeks.

- I love words and I think a lot of my creativity comes out in word and written and artistic expression that way.

So I immediately like was like, what word do I wanna write?

Love.

And I'm doing some basics, you know.

The stencils, I love girly colors.

So I was sticking with the white and pink for now.

But it's fun.

- [Son] It's cool having a mom who supports you wanting to spray paint, things of that nature.

- Yeah, but there will be limitations on like the spray painting we've talked about.

Like I don't wanna see, you know, his tags all over the bridges in Charlotte.

But I mean.

- That will not occur.

That will not occur.

(upbeat music) - [Elizabeth] I want them to walk away with a sense of community.

For me, a workshop is a success if you go home and you feel like, gosh, that was really good, I wanna do something else creative.