Mostly Jazz Funk & Soul Festival

Festival vibes

This has to be the best weekend I have ever spent in Birmingham, hands down.

Gerv, Carl & Keith, all the staff and visitors at the festival were great, the music was probably the mist inspiring line-up I have ever had the good fortune to paint amongst.

My favourites were George Clinton & the P-Funk Orchestra, Fred Wesley & the JB’s, Odyssey and The Family Stone. Awesome to hear those acts in a normally private park hidden away in south Birmingham, away from the credit card theme parks. The weather held out for the days I was there, making the painting a very promising affair.

The painting went up pretty quick. I think I was only supposed to paint one side of the cube, parked up inside the food and drink area (very useful!). I was there with a fair few muckers too. Painting with me were Meek, Fluid, Tempo, Newso, Agent, Step & Graffitiartist.com. There was plenty of paint, Meek loaned me his ladders, we got meal tickets and a selection of refreshments courtesy of the festival.

The work I decided to drop was only fresh in my mind a few days, since I was going to paint a practice piece nearer home, but there were days of rainfall. The first day went really fast, probably the fastest I’ve ever painted; got there around 1pm (after trying to navigate through Saturday morning city centre traffic) and stopped painting at 8pm ish.

With lots of breaks…

When I returned the following day, I painted the ‘valve bee’ with the lighting. There wasn’t much else to do but enjoy the festival and attend the official after party at the wonderful Prince of Wales pub in the centre of Moseley.

Sketches

The concept began as an extension to my ‘audio forest/city’. The idea that flying insects are valves gaining electricity from the audio played by the speaker plant, thus the valves would light up. One of the most familiar of the British insects is the Bumble Bee. I discovered that the Latin name for the genus is Bombus Ruderatus. The ruderatus has become the word ruderal in English, which translates as ‘to flourish or grow in waste land or rubbish’. I just mashed up the title to read ‘Ruderal Bombus’.

Photograff

Most of the photography here is by Meek, long time co-conspirator and good friend www.photograff.co.uk. He also works on the wonderful 400ml Heroes, West Midlands graffiti and photography (including some tasty NTC, go have a peek) www.400mlheroes.co.uk

Found a cheeky image that was taken at Moseley Folk Festival the previous year, in the same park.