Piece #67

Turn from evil and do good; seek peace and pursue it.

Psalm 34:14

left to right: &&&, static, me, doc and bif.

Piece #66

My salvation and my honor depend on God ; he is my mighty rock, my refuge.

Psalm 62:7

Blazefest 2009

I'm not going to break it down day by day but immediately following the trip to Saskatchewan my lovely wife Tara and I drove to Schenectady NewYork where I taught graffiti lessons all week as part of an outreach with youth for christ called blazefest. This is the 3rd or 4th year that I've been out and it was a great week of ministry and painting. Back from previous years were Rayski, Bam Bam, Ms. Natalie and the YFC crew along with some new instructors Verbs, DJ promote, Craig Nice the incredible MC, B-Girl Stella, B-boy kiddoh, Minus1 fdc, and Joel Stigale. It was a lot of fun Minus helped me teach graffiti and it was great to meet up with DJ promote who is also a graffiti writer and was one of the guys I looked up to when I started writing graffiti. durring the days I taught high school and middle school kids the art of graffiti and respect for property and at night we went around to different neighbourhoods in Schenectady and had kind of like a concert and preaching time it was really cool. Joel thought I was gonna get myself shot when I painted over some gang graffiti, Tara danced up a storm, kids got saved, and they gave me free paint at the end. What else can you ask for? Oh yeah, no bad press... Check!

Saskatchewan Trip: Day 9

The rain had come down last night and ruined alot of what we had been working on but the guys had to leave so I agreed to do my best to fix what was ruined, we ran out to a paint store got some grey paint and I started working right up until it was time to catch my flight out. We left straight from the wall to the airport and took a non stop flight back to toronto which arrived at midnight where my buddy Jamie picked us up and I drove from Toronto back to London that night.

Saskatchewan Trip: Day 8

Today was the last day of sheduled painting so I got a real early start (5am) on the day and walked from the billets house to the church. The church is in a bad part of saskatoon and along my 5 minute walk I was propositioned by a prostitute. I was so shocked that all I could do is say "no thank you" and keep walking. I've met alot of prostitutes before especially when I worked with the homeless youth but I had never been propositioned before. I've counselled former male prostitues but walking away like that - not saying anything, not at least trying to make it better... I just felt helpless and so saddened for this girl and so powerless to help her. I tried to ignore it as I got to the wall and started to paint - to think of the goodness of God or something but I couldn't, it was nagging at me I felt at the edge of tears crying for this girl and the life shes living mixed with regret and a strange uneasyness. I started painting the portrait of the alcoholic when cowboy came over and started to show me some tips (cowboy is a fantastic artist) he started working with it and he told me a little bit about his life and eventually asked if he could finish the portrait and asked if I wouldn't mind working on painting the face of the prostitute. It was so cleansing such a release to identify with the pain and to paint out of that fear and despiration. The feeling of appathy disipated as I painted, spreading the message that there is hope for this situation. I changed the source picture to look more like the girl who I met earlier and after I was finished I felt more at peace and whole maybe.

We kept working late into the night, amp camer and I. Sonz and Cowboy had gone back home and pyksy was with her children. I was the last day and we had alot of work left we stayed up till 1 or 2am. I got back to the billets home and heard rain as I fell asleep.

Saskatchewan Trip: Day 7

Painting, painting and more painting sun up to sun down, this walll is huge there are six of us working on it but it's still very large. I finished up my section and camer and cowboy let me loose on doing some other major parts to the wall which was surprising and fun, Tara helped with the filling in of some of it and it was a great day.

Saskatchewan Trip: Day 6

We drove from regina and went to Saskatoon. As we were driving we noticed that we needed to stop for gas so we eventually pulled off to a gas station... that was closed for renovations and they said the next gas station was 120km away. There was no way we were going to make it 200 km on the gas we had, so we prayed. As it turns out the guy at the hardware store was wrong and there was an open gas station 10-15 minutes down the way (phew). So we filled it up and got back on the road... going the wrong way. Camer had pulled off and started going the wrong way down the highway I was the first to notice and started screaming, Cam pulled off and in a tone fitting a californian asked why I was so tence. Amp had also noticed but just quietyly asked barely audibly "yo, dude are we going the right way?" We arrived in Saskatoon alive and roughly on time met up with the people from the church and Sonz. We started laying things out but we had a few little hiccupps from the church pastor who wanted some things changed at the last minute. Camer patiently went through it with the pastor and agreed to some changes he suggested the crew wasn't peticularily happy but we started sketching out the changes and eventually started painting. I took my time and didn't really start doing too much I was taking it easy and just letting Cowboy and Camer and the pastor make the decisions. At one point cowboy looked over at me and asked my why I hadn't started and I told him I was just taking my time. I figured that honestly camer and cowboy would be painting most of the wall and that I would run out of things to paint and eventually just stand around waiting kinda like I had earlier on in the trip. So to make sure I was painting for the next 3 days I was gonna take those three days to do the one section entrusted to me. However, both cowboy and camer suggested I really move fast and then start on such and such. We met our host family but to be honest I was exausted by the end of the day and I felt really bad about not making small talk but I just crashed on the bed they provided they seemed really nice though.