This week: Paint the town abstract

Just over a month ago, the BR Walls project was celebrating the end of a successful Kickstarter campaign to get it off the ground and onto walls downtown. Not wanting to lose momentum, Casey Phillips and Kathryn Thorpe got right to work, setting up shop, forming a jury, narrowing down submissions and establishing relationships between building owners and artists. And now, the scaffolding and paint is already crawling up the side of McGlynn, Glisson & Mouton’s office building on Florida Street downtown.

On Thursday night, BR Walls is hosting a block party as artists Saliha Staib and Clark Derbes continue working on their mural on Florida and Third streets. The event starts at 7 p.m. with DJ Otto playing tunes. A few shots of the progress can be seen on BR Walls’ Facebook page. As the ultimate goal is to beautify the bland walls of buildings downtown, offering them up as blank canvases for talented artists, you can say you were there when the first paintbrush was put to brick!

After checking out the live art, walk across the street to Elevator Projects’ ART-cade fundraiser on the corner of Florida and Third streets. The collective of artists has hosted several pop-up events in unique spaces around town since the beginning of the year, and each has offered a showcase of up-and-coming artists doing wild installations and performance art that can’t be contained in a typical gallery. Following that short tradition, expect lots of DIY live arcade games (like life-sized Whack-A-Mole!), food from Harrington’s, drinks and more. The event runs 7 p.m.-9 p.m. Thursday. Check out Elevator Projects’ Facebook page for more, including photos from their last event.

On Saturday, two events will keep local artists in the limelight. LSU School of Art’s Glassell Gallery in the Shaw Center hosts the 11th annual Summer Invitational Art Show, featuring more than 50 artists, with an opening reception Saturday from 7 p.m.-9 p.m.

Afterward, change into your best white linen and take the elevator up to Tsunami for the White Linen Summer Solstice event featuring an art battle and silent auction with artists TJ Black, Jacob Zumo, Marc Fresh and Jade Brady. The event is free and runs from 7 p.m.-11 p.m.

And finally, Playmakers of Baton Rouge presents the final performances of Pippi Longstocking on Saturday and Sunday at 2 p.m. Visit playmakers.net for more information.