First of all...let it just be said that the sacred energies that be seem to truly work in mysterious ways. Thats how this past weekend seemed to go- unfolding itself into an unexpected, yet well defined path of righteous fun.
A week or so ago a friend mentioned the FaerieWorlds 2011 festival and whether or not i was planning on going. I had completely forgotten that the festival was going to take place so soon and so near( in Eugene Oregon) and upon discovering that it wasn't extremely expensive to attend it peeked my interest. What was more interesting was that Danny had come across an urgent message- one of the main bands- Telesma -was in need of carpool faeries. The lead singer and the drummer were to fly into PDX but had no way to get to the Eugene fairgrounds. Long story short we ended up carpooling to the festival with these two very fine folks. When the band saw my body painting photos they invited me to paint Ian the didgeridoo/percussionist from the band. Ian regularly goes on stage in bodypaint, and has been painted by amazing artist such as Kelli Bickman and Alex Grey!
We arrived at the fairgrounds just a couple hours before Telesma was to preform. The campground area was beautiful, dappled with nice shading trees with green forested hills in the distance:
I had painted a third eye + filigree on myself, and then a third eye on Danny before we made our way into FaerieWorlds festival. So glad we had this picture snapped- we have so few together and this one came out nice!
We had agreed to meet Ian backstage behind the main stage so that we could get the body painting finished in time for sound checks and setup. so we hurried across the camp grounds.
( all the following photos in this post were taken by Danny)
At the back of the stage was this HUGE tepee that was setup as the lounge area and thats where we worked. Ian had me use the paint he normally wears which was actually createx airbrush paint. I guess its the only stuff he has found that will actually hold up to all the sweat and movement he does during shows. He had me help paint a white basecoat. Once that was in place i was able to start with my fun. As always i began by painting a third eye on the forehead...then worked my way out from there.
I only had about 30 minutes to do the body painting so i was painting in a frenzy but i had some crazy-wonderful live music to listen to as i painted because the Gypsy Nomads were onstage before Telesma. They had a very interesting sound- kinda punk fuses with celtic jig jive/ flesh eating mermaid siren singing. i loved it and it was the perfect " painting really really fast" music.
As i was painting Ian i realized that he is actually the first man i have done a body painting on. I have been working strictly with women for my body painting series up until now. Generally i view the female form as being a much more interesting canvas with lots of curves and shapes then the male physical form. But i was actually pleasantly surprised to find Ian was a wonderful canvas full of fun shapes to work with to highlight/define with my line work.
So here he is all finished!
Danny snapped these right before Ian ran onstage to join the setup.
He looked magnificent up there with his crazy music devices!
Telesma is more then a band, they are an EXPERINCE!
taken from their bio: "The Telesma experience is an ecstatic trans-cultural phenomenon with a highly infectious and danceable beat. Exploding on the Baltimore music scene in 2002, it soon developed a loyal local fan base and then shook the underground festival scene. Alex Grey, the noted visionary artist, hailed Telesma as “shamanic… with a sense of an underlying universal
wisdom…a rare combination in a rock/techno band.”
Telesma’s blurs the line between performer and audience, attracting the most
creative VJs, dancers, visual artists and body artists to its shows. Every Telesma show is a vortex of creativity; a celebration of body, mind and spirit."and they rocked me till i almost dropped( realizing that dancing in the heat of summer with a corset on can be a rather intense experience in its self!
can you spot me and my dancin feet?
The rest of the day i had off to wonder the festivities. This festival had wonderful food so i munched- yes i did( handmade veggie tamales for lunch and veggie/grilled tofu styled pad Thai for din din.) We also strode around checking out the vendors. i was very surprised to see not very many artists booths. Instead there seemed to be a lot of leather mask makers, faery inspired clothing and so on. I did stop and talk to a few of the artists whom all said that it had been a rather slow year at the festival- many of them were very glad that they had decided to split booth fees with friends. They said that the booth fees had gone up since last year yet attendance was a little lacking. Some theories to that were that there was to many fried and crispy faeries last year since it was 104 for two of main days. Perhaps the heat scared some folks? that or the economy is truly getin to be a downer? Still...i am glad we went to check out the fair and scope the opportunities present. I had initially thought to do a full art booth next year but now i am thinking it might work better for me to just set up a lil table + umbrella and offer my body painting servies. So i have some research to do...to see if and how i might swing that for next year.
