Island 2000 Trust Blog

Spring is making itself felt in East Cowes and the No Barriers team is now in engaged in a race with the trees and flowers to put on the most attractive show of colour and artistry. Most of the art panels put up on the blue hoardings last year are still looking bright and cheerful enough despite the elements, but a few have been ruined in a spate of vandalism. We decided to fix this damage as soon as possible by replacing the broken panels with pieces of plywood painted in bright colours. We had the paint, we had the volunteers, but we didn’t have the wood. Happily, Ron Bowler of Morey’s Timber Merchants in Newport offered to help us out. Not only did Morey’s supply the wood, but they cut all the panels to size and delivered them the next day, all free of charge - so many thanks to them! We have already completed the first coats of paint and hope to have the boards put up in the next few days.

We’ve got some new graffiti on the blue hoardings in East Cowes.

I know what you’re thinking… graffiti eh – the underground, often covert activity of youths in ‘hoodies’ and/or baseball caps?? Well scratch that, and please let’s not reinforce stereotypes at this early stage!

So, on Saturday 17th February we invited over a group of professional graffiti artists called Somnio (www.somnio.co.uk) to create a new painting on the blue boards. Somnio is an art collective which has been formed to bring together like-minded creatives. This piece can be seen in the Church Path area near the disused Bethel Church, which is adjacent to Well Road.

For those of you who don’t know, this was part of No Barriers (NB), an ongoing project run by the South East England Development Agency (SEEDA) and Island 2000 Trust. Over the past year or so we’ve been gradually turning the hoardings into an outside community gallery space for all to enjoy. See www.nobarriers.org.uk for details of the projects so far.

Lead by Duncan Newland and Stuart Bedford, the Somnio artists set to work early in the morning, bringing with them a vast array of sketches, designs, stencils, and err… paint! They worked on individual parts of the boards discussing and critiquing each others work along the way.
The resulting artwork displays figurative imagery with more decorative, organic forms, shapes, patterns and motifs. It also combines bold and graphic styles with looser, painterly techniques. The frame motif gives a feeling of continuity without controlling the individual artists’ styles. Hmmm, can you tell I used to work in art gallery?

The activities of the day created quite a stir along Church Path site – some people avoided it, and some embraced it, asking questions about what was going on. The general feedback was very positive indeed. Two girls were heard to say: “They’ve made it look really cool down here now.” That’s more like it!

We hope to do more work with Somnio in the future. And hope that this will open the door to other NB creative activities and artistic opportunities along the way.

Photography by Ian Boyd and Tim Johnson. See more of Tim’s graffiti photos at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/64473370@N00/