On June 26th, girlthings and art monkeys were let lose over Amsterdam.  They climbed trees, jumped from buildings.  The little bastards even bit.

Unleashing evil art imps was my part in the Urban Art Festival.  Produced by the sprawling American Book Center and sponsored by Red Bull, the UAF is a celebration of craft, street, DIY and underground art.  Creators gathered from as far afield as Greece and the US to transform the Spui into a guerilla art playground.  The Ladies Fancywork Society crocheted elaborate cozies for bikes.  Autobahn carved tweets in stone.  The stunning Lotta from Utrecht rocked a pirate hat at a free, sun-drenched Dr. Sketchy’s.

The entire square was filled with tables staffed by artists making giant murals and showing off masks, elaborate papercrafts and punked-up sewing machines.  Meanwhile, the American Book Center is the sort of place that makes book enthusiasts melt into slavering puddles of drool.  Think four floors of obscurely beautiful sketchpads, fat fashion books, photo explorations of Congolese sapeurs and endless racks of manga.  Down the road, the ABC Treehouse, ABC’s community center satellite, hosted panels telling you the future of illustrated books, and workshops on how to engage in yarn-bombing (ie sexy, outlaw knitting)

Events like the Urban Art Festival fill me with such love because they turn consumers into participants.  Innocent bystanders get sucked in to sketching models or drawing a balloon festooned art stage.

At the end of the day, there was nary a trace of the mayhem, save a collectively owned “Park Pillow” bolted to the bench and a few dozen capering girlthings.

You can catch one.  But be careful.  They bite.

Words and photos by Molly Crabapple