FAME The Movie (I wanna live forever)

I eat a lot..

Fame 2012!

Touched down in the South of Italy last night for Fame Festival. This was today’s warm-up piece, super fun in the sun. ‘Fame’ is the Italian for hunger and needless to say I’ve spent most of my time eating.

Madre

‘Madre’, the latest film from my boy Andy Telling is fresh off the editing suite. Soon after following me around the Middle East, Andy hot-footed it to Southern Italy to document Word To Mother’s time at the fantastic Fame Festival.

Fame 2009 – Fired Ceramics

Angelo just sent me over these pics of my fired ceramics. No cracks and no disasters thank you God. Sweet.

FAME 2009 – Ceramics

Once my to tower was finished I settled into this nice cool and calm room to work on some ceramic plates. Grottaglie is famous for its ceramic tradition dating back hundreds of years so it only felt right to give it a go, although I didn’t have much luck last year.  I think this room is a million years old. I haven’t seen them since they’ve been fired and anything can happen in a kiln, yikes.

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Lucy was working on her ceramics too and she introduced me to some savage new music while we were working . You’ll recognize this Galt McDermott tune from being sampled by Dan the Automator and Gangstarr amongst others. Sexy.

And then there’s this crazy genius Moondog. I’d never heard of him before but I’ve been listening to him loads since. You’ll recognize this one from the Mr Scruff tune.

 

FAME 2009 – La Torre

And so to the Tower. Angelo had this great idea of painting these towers in the countryside around Grottaglie. It was more difficult finding a suitable tower though as many of them store electrical generators and have wires coming out the top. Not so good with a cherry-picker.

We even door-stepped a princess, yes a real life princess, to ask if we could paint the tower on her land. She was totally up for it and even asked me why I wanted to paint something so ugly and I mumbled something about  it being beautiful when I’m finished with it. So we were about to set off when she realized that I wanted to paint the tower, not paint a picture of it. She changed her tune fairly fast, too much risk with the generator inside and all that. Dammit. At least I got to speak to a real live princess.

So this tower was the eventual candidate. I was well happy with the location, perched amongst the vineyards. Nice.

 

I took a looser approach to handling the figures this time round, using white emulsion and a brush with black spraypaint. The oil- based spraypaint and the water-based emulsion don’t like eachother but I think that gives a nice raw finish. 

FAME 2009 – Mmmm Food!

First up, how can I start blogging about my time in Italy without a dedication to all the beautiful food I ate? ‘Fame‘ meaning ‘hunger’ in Italian is an appropriate title for the festival as eating was nearly all we did. These cherries were freshly picked on Angelo’s farm and ready for market. Me, Angelo and Lucy spent our first hour together eating cherries from the tree. Nice. All this food (except the gelatos) come courtesy of Gilda (ciao bella), the backbone of Fame and Italy’s best kept secret.

‘The Hand of God Feeds the Hungry Pilgrims..’

Fame festival 2009

This is just a quick post about Fame 2009. I got back from 9 days in the South of Italy painting and eating and drinking and painting and eating and drinking. Full report tomorrow with loadsa pix. Ciao.

The Wall That Nearly Killed Me.

The finished wall…

Detail 1

Detail 2

The wall that nearly killed me. I love a bit of mellow-drama. After arriving in LA I suffered an asthma attack. I didn’t have my inhaler with me so i had to grab a super ridiculous over the counter lung buster, the type of thing you could only ever get in America (I later found out it had adrenalin in it).  Anyway, I didn’t want to tackle a massive wall coz my lungs were knackered and it was really hot too and it being my first time in LA I just wanted to go star hunting. So I did decide to paint the side of the gallery wall, figured at least it would stay for a while before someone bombed over it. But damn it was hot. Too hot for my Irish skin. In 2004 I painted in Soweto and that was the hottest condition I’ve ever painted in but this was worse for some reason. The wall was all lumpy, it didn’t like the paint. Blah blah blah, excuses excuses, it was a pain but I got there in the end. Even if I did vow to blank it all out a million times. Here are the progress shots –

Fame Festival, Grottaglie, Italy.

Also deleted by my internet gremlins was my post about my 10 days spent in the south of Italy painting with the lovely people at Studio Cromie. Many thanks to Angelo and his family for making us all feel so welcome and for sending us back to London with much bigger bellies.

 

Spent 2 days painting in this old abandoned monastery outside the town. The lads dropped me off each morning with a gallon of water and monstrous paninis to keep me going. Its amazing how an abandoned building can make so much noise. I swear I wasn’t scared. But apart from the Italian ghosts taking an immediate dislike to me, this was by far the best location I have ever painted in.

 

Managed to squeeze in a piece on the wall of Studio Cromie HQ.

 

Grottaglie is a town with a very strong ceramic tradition going back centuries. I gave it a go. Might be best to stick to painting.

 

I swear these guys are the Mafia.

 

 

No trip to Italy would be complete without food. This outdoor oven is where The Goodness is made.