The Great Hall of the Memorial Union was filled with excited chatter in anticipation to watch performance painter David Garibaldi and renowned comedian Ron Funches entertain Friday night.

Funches warmed up the audience by inviting his longtime friend Gabe Dinger to be his opening act. Dinger livened-up the crowd by not holding back in his comedy. He started about by talking about his ridiculous his name is.

“My name is Biblical, ‘Gabe Cain Dinger.’ Gabe is an angel in the Bible while Cain was known for inventing murder,” Dinger said, causing widespread laughter. “My mom told me she named she wanted my name to be a yin and yang type of thing. Then why didn’t you just name me Yin Yang Dinger, mom!?”

Dinger went on to tell comedic stories about his life which segued nicely into introducing Funches to the audience. Funches graced the audience with his presence on stage and the crowd didn’t stop laughing until he left it.

Right away, Funches caused rowdy laughter with his initial jokes about Iowa.

“The outside here is gross,” Funches said, immediately causing laughter, “You go 5 minutes away from campus and it’s like ‘The Walking Dead’ out there.”

Funches went on to talk about how his recent weight loss of 140 pounds has opened his eyes to the qualms of food addiction.

“Food addiction is harder than drug addiction because they don’t come out different kinds of crack every day.” Funches said, causing uproarious laughter.  

Funches made the audience feel as if they were talking to an old friend with his comedic style. He would laugh at his own jokes and occasionally poke fun at the audience. Funches asked the audience on their opinion on what the best course of action would be to make Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson his best friend.

“Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson is the Beyonce for boys,” Funches said, causing a lot of laughter from the male audience members. “Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson could murder my whole family and I would assume that they did something to deserve it.”

Funches comedy kept the laughs going to whole night. Funches even had some wholesome moments when he talked about his son Malcolm.

“My big goal in life is for my son to never have to struggle,” Funches said, causing “awws” from the audience.

Funches very quickly resorted back to his classic comedic style in continuing talking about his son.

“I’m gonna work hard for him. I’m gonna get him to a good college,” Funches joked. “Not some state college.”

This caused obvious laughs and even some disapproving shakes of the head by the audience. But with Funches, it was all in good fun.

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Preceding Funches performance was performance painter David Garibaldi. Garibaldi’s show “Rhythm and Hue” included much more than Garibaldi just painting on stage.

Garibaldi hyped up the audience with an up-beat music intro as he burst onto the stage, causing boisterous applause. Without saying a single word, Garibaldi was already adored by the audience. Garibaldi immediately started painting along to Ed Sheeran’s “Castle On The Hill.”

A choreographed light show illuminated the paint on his canvas as the audience watched in anticipation to find out what he was painting. Right before beat drops in the song, Garibaldi would dance his way to the microphone and ask the audience to clap along.

It was an amazing sight to see a six foot tall portrait of Ed Sheeran come together in less than six minutes.

Garibaldi took time in between painting his amazing portraits to talk about what inspired him to get into art.

“My animation teacher in high school made me a deal,” Garibaldi said. “He told me that if I spent more time in the classroom than out in the streets that he would let me paint.”

Garibaldi painted a portrait of Lady Gaga and one of the Statue of Liberty hugging a child during his show. These acts were beautifully choreographed to music and light shows but the climax of his show was his final painting.

The audience could tell right away that this painting was different than the others because he started it by dipping his hands in paint and splattering it across the canvas. Buckets of paint surrounded Garibaldi as he would haphazardly mix them and throw them onto the canvas.

Set to Martin Garrix & Bebe Rexha’s “In The Name Of Love,” Garibaldi’s painting started to come together. The audience quickly realized that he was painting the portrait of someone upside down. At the capstone of his show, Garibaldi picked up his canvas and flipped it right-side up, revealing a beautifully detailed portrait of Albert Einstein.

Garibaldi left the audience feeling invigorated and excited. The fun didn’t stop at the end of his show though. Garibaldi came out to the audience to take selfies and answer questions after cleaning up a bit.

“They keep inviting me back here,” Garibaldi laughed and explained, “Iowa State is the venue that I have performed at the most at and I love the energy here.”