I started to visit a wasteland in Frome in southwest England. My partner started selling her art at an independent market in the town on a Sunday Morning.
It started off by me (grudgingly) being woken up a 7am on a Sunday to help take my Mrs stock on a 40 min drive to this place then hang around most of the day. I wasn't so keen to begin with then I discovered that there was a large abandoned building in the centre of the town..... I fell in love with the place, Sprawling walls lots of space to paint for a graffiti artist like me! I knew a few local guys who had been painting it on and off but there was still lots of empty space. These market Sunday's were about to get more fun. I started bringing Spray paint with me painting with another good friend and artist "Paris" doing graffiti on the walls.
This was great as Bristol, where I am from was starting to get pretty full up with Graffiti. Lots of artists were and still are moving to the city based on its reputation in the Graffiti and Street Art world. Although I think this is a good thing ultimately it just meant that a spare wall was getting quite hard to come by. This new place was a breath of fresh air in comparison it was a sprawling abandoned area. Slowly over a few months visiting once a month we started to fill up the walls. I looked around the grounds and noticed that we weren't the only people using it and there was a lot of fly tipping going on too.
It was one cold sunday morning while waiting for my mate turn up to the abandoned spot I started pulling some of the junk together . A deep fat fryer some metal bits and bobs. I found a way of making all the junk hold its own weight by jamming bits in a wedging other parts together. Not only was it satisfying doing something with the waste that was just sat there, but it was also becoming quite tall and I realised I could make quite a big thing there. I had some blue paint with me and some spray paint. By the time my friend turned up questioning my sanity, I had a half built structure which later became THE FROME WIZARD. See pictures below
So the wizard ended up being 10 ft tall with the large blue traffic cone balanced on his head . The face was made from a watering can cut in half and a paddling pool for the ice blue hair around the back. There was also carpet used for the beard/hair. A bird table used as a staff, and for his feet, the bottom rubber part of a heras fence x2. This was all painted to bring it all to life.
It lasted about an hour due to the Local kids smashing it up. I didn't mind as it gave them something to do in this otherwise quite boring town. I just vowed to make the next ones more sturdy even buying a drill to hold the scavenged wood together. Here are some more of the things I made at the spot. Im going to make more there this year so stay tuned. Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed the story and the Sculpture. See below the Indoor 10ft Fly-agaric mushroom and a Vaughn Bode Lizard tribute.
Also another sculpture of a mushroom and me in a wizard hat that is taken from a film I have made which I will upload to Dtube and do a post about soon! This is in Bristol not at this abandoned factory.
