Barefoot Finale

This Saturday was the Barefoot Games Finale at the Eden Project.

I was invited to paint on a huge wall, along with with graffiti artist Mau-Mau, during the celebration of all that Barefoot Games has achieved over the past year.

There were live bands, samba dancers, drummers, stilt walkers, giant paella, us, other artists, and a whole lot more!

The Barefoot Games project only ran for a year. During this time it reached out to a vast number of young people in the area to share positive skills and help them achieve personal goals.

It was great to work with this team and, although Barefoot Games has now ended, The eden Project will continue to benefit the wider community.

Next Generation

On Saturday 25th June I ran a massive drawingonthings workshop in Poltair Skatepark in St Austell as part of a Youthfest skate comp day organised by Barefoot Games and The House youth centre.

These four panels were painted by young people who wanted to have a creative outlet on the day. About 40-50 took part during the day.

This was the first day of the recent heat wave and it wasn't expected. During the skate comp there were DJ's playing and a barbecue after.

Skate Artwork Barefoot Games Skate Comp 2011

Yesterday at the Eden Project's Barefoot Games skate and scoot comp at Mount Hawke Skatepark:




This minute 100s of newly spray-painted skateboards and scooters are flying round the streets and skateparks of Cornwall!


The Door Of Perception came too, capturing important ideas, doodles and visual imagery from the skaters, which were then painted on their skates and scoots.

Introducing: The Door Of Perception!

This is a new drawingonthings workshop where spontaneous doodles are drawn on a freestanding door by any number of people present.
Sounds simple. But, is it?

Yesterday I took"The Door Of Perception" to The Eden Project's EDEN CAFE in St Austell's new White River Place for local young people visiting the cafe to draw on as part of a Barefoot Games workshop. The ideas and images that emerge will be discussed and used in further community projects and activities.


Why "Door Of Perception"?
Since William Blake inscribed the immortal lines in his poem The marriage of Heaven and Hell into a slab of molten granite on top of a ferocious volcano somewhere around the dawn of time, man has held the humble door as a totem symbol of our understanding of the universe. Blake:

"When the doors of perception are cleansed, man will see things as they truly are, infinite."

Author and creative adventurer Aldous Huxley read Blake during his A-levels in the 1940s, and used the term for the title of a book in the 50's. Rumor has it that he gave a copy of his book to a young Jim Morrison at a party on Venice Beach ten years later.

Jim was looking for a slogan at the time as he had recently began printing t-shirts with ink and a simple silk screen press he had bought from Andy Warhol who was recently at Venice on his summer vacation from New York.

Jim went on to sell thousands of CLEAN THE DOORS t-shirts to people on the beach that summer. The slogan had CLEAN written in small, red letters and THE DOORS in big, bold, black capitals underneath.
A somewhat bizarre motto for a celebrated "genius" to come up with, but the hippies loved it!

Anyway, to cut a long story short, the red ink Warhol had sold Jim was a dodgy batch he had made while experimenting with tomato soup, and it faded in the sun!

Morrison was in an unknown band at the time called The Chairs, and they were going nowhere, fast! When the band were looking for a new name, keyboard player Ray Manzarek pointed to the hippies walking round in t-shirts with just THE DOORS written on the front in bold, black helvetica font... and the rest is history.

So it seemed to me perfect sense to carry a phrase with such lineage forward into a new era.