Following our appearance in Sannicandro on August 18, we had many people approach us with suggestions and offers of support. One of these benefactors, was a informative and helpful young man named Walter, whom I called Wall-E. 🙂 Wall-E told us of an event in his seaside home town or Manfredonia to be held from Thursday until Sunday. Determined to leave for the event on Thursday, I was waylaid by a combination of a dinner party and general unpreparedness;

I had decided to convert the hard top trailer into a display and drying table with a vertical backboard to be used for displaying works for sale. I painted the table top with as many images as I could feel happy with and established hooking points for the clocks and display records to go on to.

Perhaps I was ready, perhaps I wasn’t – tho’ this night would tell. I was expecting a busy night, yet in spite of that, the crowds didn’t draw in and settle and lighting was a problem too. We relocated to the space beneath a floodlight outside a local bank. From then on, we didn’t slow down all night…. till 3.30am!

This first night was hard going for me. I had to attract a circle crowd for every demonstration and, when each was done – I would attract one artist from each circle… so yeah… I painted a lot of records that night, did a lot of work on the delivery of my presentation and found ways to include the audience in with my reality.

My highlights of the evening were one young lady whom returned about 6 or 7 times, painting records for her less courageous associates. I have to laugh to myself at these circumstances – the people paying miss out, and the people doing… really do get to have a go. I can tell they love it, and I love them when they love it!

Early on in the night, one fellow came to me, and asked whether I am willing to paint a stencil image of Pink Floyd’s album cover ‘Dark Side Of The Moon’ for him as a present to his father. He also said that he would cut the stencil for me! “So…” he asked me, “what do you want me to do?” I replied that I would like a cutting of the triangle, and that I would work out how how to do the rest as I went along. He returned about an hour or so later with a triangle cut from acetate and held together with staples where the bridges had broken. Sure, I could have made a much better one myself, from better choice of material – yet this was a gift for his father and I felt so proud to be part of that process for him.

In spite of his assurances that he was willing to wait until the next day, he kept coming back all night to see how I was doing, which was good. His presence reminded me to keep picking at the job, especially in between circle shows and when I was fed up with entertaining people at my own material expense. The cool thing was.. that this production process itself attracted as much attention as the record spinning did! By the time the night was done (and he walked home with his clock in hand at 3.30 in the morning), I had taken deposit on two more!

Maria was great. If you’ve ever been to the continent and seen the way establishments have a cashier… this as exactly where the people assumed her to be, and she worked well; making up clocks and telling people about my stencil work and other efforts.

I staggered into bed at 5 that morning, and was awakened in just time for lunch and further preparation. Gawd! I felt terrible! I had arranged to meet some people at around 6 or 7 to make up some clocks for them and to deliver the two promised Pink Floyd discs that I hadn’t even started working on! Ugh! This was going to be a hard one… or so I thought! I took my time, perfecting a production process to make four Pink Floyd discs, to wash my self off, and to hit the road for the one hour journey back to the event location.

Tonight was awesome! The people were a totally different box of fish than the previous night. Where I was feeling beaten and harangued the night before, tonight I was welcomed, supported and encouraged. Within half an hour of setting up, all four Pink Floyd clocks had found new owners. Whilst the crowd was still relatively quiet, I set myself to making three more, and went home with them! Who’s to know what works and what doesn’t?

The highlight of my night was meeting local stencil artist ‘Red’ and his lady Marista. Also the lady who was too shy to have a go – I promised her a piece of my art if she didn’t like her own. She loved her own, and made a clock out of it. One very happy customer!

At the end of our night, the local bar treated us to beer and mint flavoured vodka shots. “You guys did great” they said as the closed their doors and we all staggered home. I had been ready to party into all hours this time, tho’ the vibe wasn’t there at all. We slept in the car and awoke feeling too tired to be sane.. one more coffee for the road and I’m giving the stuff a wide berth for the foreseeable future. I need a nervous system!