Fernando Linhares kneels on a worn pad of foam rubber. Working his light brown, steady hands over a canvas, two dark planets rapidly emerge over a blue and white waterfall. The unfinished work erupts with reds, oranges and yellows. A crowd stands in awe as he transforms some spray paint and a bunch of can tops into a new world exploding with color.
Finishing up, a clumsy gnat sticks to his canvas and Linhares quickly sprays him into his demise and jokes, "Now he's art!"
Performing semi-regularly on Franklin Street to the tune of a couple hundred dollars a night, Linhares is one of many street performers who dance, sing, play and paint their way into the ever-changing portrait of Chapel Hill's most renowned street.
A task more difficult than it appears to some onlookers, many street performers work long hours for little compensation.
Triangle residents Tony King and Katie Sourbeer certainly didn't make the kind of money they were hoping for Saturday night.
Late in the evening, they had managed to find a place playing beside Linhares. While offering a diverse showing for those beginning the night, their guitar case remains only lined with a handful of coins, much to Sourbeer's chagrin.
Vibrant Green, the indie-pop rock band of brothers, didn't even have a tip bucket Friday evening as it finished its vocally fueled cover of Weezer's light-hearted geek ballad "Suzanne."
Nor did brothers Stephen, 25, Jonny, 20, and Joah Tunnell, 18, have three instruments in action --
