SNUB23 x PRHBTN 2019
This adventure began like many with an email, which at first sounded too good to be true. ‘Please come to Lexington, Kentucky and paint a massive mural. With each further contact our excitement grew, a personal but professional attitude from the organisers reinforced our determination to make this wall special.
We knew it wouldn’t be easy, but also knew that with a bigger wall and more time than we do at most of the weekend events, we could really leave our mark in this faraway place.
“PRHBTN is an annual celebration of art forms that have been criminalized, marginalized, and under-appreciated in the mainstream, featuring public murals alongside an exhibition of street art works in a space that complements the raw, powerful nature of the message and artistry of each piece.”
Our design took plenty of planning, from calculating the amount of each colour we would need to the scale of each cube. We built a model, tested colour combinations, setting our scale and worked out a schedule.
As with all our painting trips, this one started with a long journey, London to New York then on to Cincinnati, we had totally lost track of what day it was already. From the moment we met John (one half of the mighty PRHBTN duo) we knew that we’d get on, good sense of humour and sarcasm always help. The drive to Lexington flew by and we arrive at what to us looked like a big house from an old American horror movie.
After a day of unpacking kit, cutting stencils and fighting jet lag our first night out was a VIP PRHBTN Launch party at Oracle tattoo shop. Sipping our first real Kentucky bourbon the rollercoaster began, it seemed that everyone we met from that point was someone we’d get on with. We saw the artwork of Patrick Smith, who was exhibiting there, then met the man himself, he is now a good friend. Free tattoos were available, we resisted. That night was a sign of things to come, late nights with good people followed by happy days in the cold and sunshine painting.
No sooner had we begun, than visitors and local business owners visited, all with smiles, some with treats and one woman with the comment "I know what it is... it’s a chicken!" Followed by her own raucous laughter.
Day two of painting marked the arrival of Alex, a wandering art warrior who we met at Art Basel, Miami last year. We are so lucky to meet such great people, Alex is easy to like and it wasn’t long before he became a big part of our trip, even coming along to our fancy dinner at Tom Fielders home. He is now back on the road and leaving his art and happiness wherever he goes.
As you can see from the progress photos, the start was slow and the size of the wall daunting, all that white space seemed endless. But step by step and cube by cube Sprite and I smashed into it, focus and determined.
PRHBTN set up the project just right, taking us to and picking us up from the wall, feeding us delicious food, laughing at our Englishness and putting on a beautiful exhibition in a deluxe location Loundoun House. We saw great art and again met more good people, Sprite met her double and I met ‘Flash Gordon’ well not really but turned out Pat Armstrong is just as much a hero as Flash. We had one day off in the 12 days of painting and we spent with Pat, he drove us to his land in the mountains, we learnt about and fired a bunch of guns while talking about gun control and the land his family left to him, then we hiked across that very land. Then on the way back we took the sky lift (cable car/ski lift) to the natural bridge, a giant chunk of sandstone the formed a bridge across a canyon, we saw it from afar, walked under it and across it. The whole day is one neither of us will forget.
We would like to thank John and Jessica, team PRHBTN for inviting us, supporting us and all the other artist who have been lucky enough to be part of there vision of what a city can look like when it embraces large scale murals.
And a big thank you to the support and generosity of everyone we met.
Clay
Graham and Geoff of Square Pegs Studio
Alex
Rolling oven pizzas
Mirror Twin Brewing
Eppings on Eastside
Blue Door Smokehouse
Paul our Air BnB host
Patrick and Katelynn
Pat Armstrong
Nick and Michelle Hardesty
Kobra paint USA