Mazey Day Wall Painting.

Over the Golowan Festival weekend in Penzance, i was asked to help out my friend John Mackenzie to paint a wall, with a group of under 16's that he's been working with recently. John works for Addaction http://www.addaction.org.uk/ which is a UK based drug and alcohol treatment charity. The wall that we were going to paint, was outside the Addaction office in the Green Market Car Park in Penzance. I've worked with John before on other public art projects, and it's always great fun helping the young people translate their ideas onto a larger scale.

John had already been running some workshops with the group to generate ideas, and give them an introduction to some basics in spray painting. Their idea was to paint a large brain, and fill it with words that related to the effects that smoking marajuana has on the brain. We helped them draw the basic outline of the brain and the words a couple of days before the painting day.

On the day of painting, which was on Mazey Day itself, we used the wall around the corner from the brain mural as a public opinion wall. Before the young people arrived to help with painting, we sectioned the other wall up into blocks of colour, so that members of the public could have a go at spraying words about what they thought of the mural. This worked out pretty well, and everybody that had a go at painting really enjoyed themselves, and loved the fact that they were involved in painting a mural. Here's some more photos documenting the days progress.

All in all, everybody involved had a great day, and a bright, fun and colourful piece of work was produced by a very enthusiastic group of young people, and some fantastic members of the public. Big thanks to John Mackenzie, Carol Ashe and everyone else who got involved. Let's see if we can brighten some more walls up around Penzance!

My A'th Kar NQY / Harbour Wall Mural and Viral Advert.

So, next week i start the long process of beginning another massive mural for the My A'th Kar NQY project. We have been commissioned to recreate our ill fated Burger King mural on the bottom part of a wall in Newquay Harbour. Above is a proposal for what the whole wall could look like, if we get funding to carry it on higher.

At the moment, we can only paint up to a certain height, but hopefully we will be able to complete the whole thing including the viewing platforms right at the top. The MAKN trade mark silhouettes will be included in the final design, with them sitting down on the benches so that you can sit next to them or even on them! I was supposed to start preparation of the wall this week, but due to our amazing British summer, it has been rained off.

As a side line to the mural project, MAKN have now branched out into merchandise to help raise awareness for the project, and to help fund more wonderful creative projects like the public art work. I was asked to help the small group of young people who are responsible for this part of the project, to help them develop ideas for a Viral Advert which they hope will help promote their MAKN t-shirts which they have designed.

I spent yesterday morning at the Excess Energy office http://www.excess-energy.co.uk/ with this group, developing a storyboard for their advert, which they will then be producing with the IT department at their school. We had a very productive session, which will hopefully help them on their way to advertising their wares.

Hopefully the weather will hold out for next week, as we have yet another mammoth painting session planned! I should have it all white washed and ready to go by then, so that we can start painting in the sun! A big thank you to Rhona @ Excess Energy and Dawn Melville for yesterday's session.

26 Flavours / Seaweed

As part of the 26 Flavours Of Cornwall project, myself and writer Kieran Haynes were asked to produce a piece of work about seaweed. The project paired 26 writers with 26 designers, matched each team with an item of Cornish produce and challenged them to come up with pieces of art that combine words and design in the form of paper table-settings. There will then be an exhibition of the work at Trebah Garden.

To give ourselves a taste and a feel for seaweed, we were put in contact with Miles from Foodswild (http://www.foodswild.com/), who forages around the Cornish coastline for this rather tasty delicacy! Miles took myself and Kieran, my partner in crime for this project, down to Porthleven to jump around the rock pools and pick out some seaweed for our lunch!

After a morning of foraging, Miles had pointed out and picked 4 or 5 different types of seaweed. Some of which we even tried raw as we stood on the rocks! The rest were to be taken back to Miles' house, for him to show us several different ways of cooking up our pickings. You can have a look at our 26 Flavours page, where Kieran has jotted down some notes on our day in the rock pools http://www.26flavours.com/flavours/seaweed.

It was now our job to use our experience, and try to combine some imagery and words suitable for our ode to seaweed. Above is a first idea i had, taken from Kieran's blog post titled 'Monsters Of Rock (Pools)'. The idea then progressed to some kind of creature made of seaweed, looking up, and praising the moon and the lunar tides that dictate it's life! Below is a draft, close to the final image that was used for the final piece, minus Kieran's words. You'll be able to see the finished article at the show at Trebah Gardens!