Upfest and Art Abandonment

I thought I should warn you in advance this is a heavy photo post but nowhere near as many as I actually took but hopefully enough to give you a rough idea of what I have been up to.

I have taken part in Free Art Friday (google it-its a great idea) for a while and recently joined the Art Abandonment facebook group.  The idea is you create art and leave it somewhere for strangers to find and enjoy!

So for my first 'abandonment' I decided to make some tags using a stamped face and a devil icon that I carved (the words are stamps that I bought). 

 I added colour with spray inks and a little mica

I decided the time to set them free was this weekend at Upfest.  Upfest is the largest free street art festival and is held in my hometown of Bristol.  They have over 300 artists from across the globe and they paint, in real time, on buildings, hoardings, cardboard, floors, vans.....you get the idea.  They paint across an area of the city based around a few streets and parks.  It is great free family entertainment with music, art classes, sales, food and all round general greatness!

To set ourselves up for the day we popped into the local YHA for a coffee and this is where I made my first 'drop' (tucked into the bottom left of the notice board)

 

 My next drop was at one of the several large boards placed around for kids and adults to 'have a go'

 I soon got into the swing of things, abandoning on park fences

 and even in  a church garden

 When we returned the next day they had all gone.  Hopefully people will be in touch to say they found them, but if not, at least I know someone may have liked them enough to take one.

So, I took several hundred photos but I am hoping that these few will give you a flavour of the event.

 They painted buildings

 Skate park ramps

 Book pages painted and pasted onto junction boxes

 Sides of businesses

 Wooden boards placed up especially for the weekend

 Bristol is well known for being politically astute so hardly a surprise that there were several political ones

 Small stencilled faces

 Stencilled vinyl records (infact we even bought the 2nd on the left)

 This painting was several stories high and blew us all away

 This Game of Thrones/Jeremy Corbyn parody prompted a lot of comments

 

 These stencils are fantastic (Big Issue vendors are a big part of Bristol life-the people of Bristol even recently organised a wedding for one of them!).

 This was on the side of a train carriage!

 The background on this one is amazing, I watched the artist create it with torn cardboard and spray paint!

 I love this one, crowds walking through a rain streaked city scape.

 Again, another building painting (seriously I have NO idea how these artists scale up their sketchbooks!)

 These were painted on temporary hoardings

 Whilst this 3D image was painted on the floor (I was lucky enough to see his work in Malta last year)

 and this was painted on a double decker bus!!!!

 As usual the tallest was this 5 story building.  

Whereas these two were much smaller and not as colourful but just as powerful images leaving you wondering HOW they paint these!!

So a weekend of much walking, catching up with friends, art abandonment and watching some skilled artists create some amazing pieces.

Upfest - you did it again!!!

Kyla