A Meeting of Minds and Fantastic Visions

I had been communicating with Delvin Solkinson (elvism.net) for some time about his Galactic Trading Card deck. I am very pleased and honored to say that he invited me to participate in his grand and very expansive project. He will be including my artwork “Manifest” in the collection.

Just as exciting was the news that I would be invited to participate in the Vision Gallery at the Liminal Village, Boom Festival in Portugal. I had heard of this project through my Berlin friends a number of years previously. There are very high quality artists involved. The next step Delvin was investigating was having me attend the festival in an offical capacity.

After all of this time getting to know Delvin over email and Skype chat sessions, I would finally get to meet him face to face. He was making his way to England to meet with Brigid Marlin of the Society for the Art of Imagination (AOI) to discuss assisting them with their Inscape magazine. I was very happy to offer him a place to stay in my studio while on his travels.

So a weary Delvin finally arrived the Pixley St warehouse over laden with many bags and four bamboo hats balanced on his head. It was quite a site. Empathising with him, as I have done much the same in recent years I relieved him of his load and sat him down with a cup of tea. After catching his breath and revitalizing himself I showed him around the warehouse and took him up to the roof terrace where our intense conversations continued.

At last his travels started to catch up with him and he needed to bed down and sleep.

The following day we were due to attend lunch at Brigid Marlin’s house at Berkhamsted, north west of London. I had been out to Brigid’s some years before when I had not long been in Europe during the Summer of 2003. I recalled that I had been rather fascinated by the ruins of an old castle very near the on the way to Brigid’s house from the train station. Enter Wikipedia, perhaps the closest equivelent to the Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy. To my surprise this seemingly innocuous village was once a place of great importance. The site of ruined castle was where William the Conquer accepted the capitulation of the Saxons. The castle was to later become the favourite residence for royalty as much as Windsor castle is to today’s royals.

When we arrived we were soon seated for lunch. Attending was Daniel Mirante, Michel de Saint Ouen and some of Brigid’s relatives. Daniel is an artist who also runs the website Lila.info which is a resource for people exploring ‘medicine culture’ ; shamanic forms of creativity and healing. He had also studied the Miche Technique under Brigid’s tutoridge. Michel has been Brigid’s right hand man, assistinging with the running of AOI and editing its magazine, Inscape. Daniel and Delvin had some catching up to do as they had long been in communication over the internet.

It was an intersting meeting of generations, perpesctives and experience with everyone sharing the same passion for Fantastic Art and its future. At the heart of the disucssions was how everyone could help each other out with their various projects. The most specifical need was for younger faces to take on roles in AOI as some of the issues associated with Brigid and Michel’s age would eventually one day make them unavailable to run the organization. I recall the same call being made at the previous luch some years ago.

Delvin, Daniel and I all eagerly took Brigid’s invitation to come up to her studio. I always enjoying visiting other artist’s creative spaces, and Brigid’s was no disappointment. There were many paintings stacked around the room which was quite full. She took the time to explain to us a series she was working on for a church.

I had brought along a copy of Peter Gric’s new catalogue that he had printed with the print on demand printers Lulu.com. As I thought, it generated much interest for the others as artists, and as magazine publishers.

Our gathering seemed brief as Michel soon departed, and a little while later Daniel had to leave because he had a few hours travel ahead of him. I opted to leave with Daniel as it gave us a chance to chat since this was the firtst time we had met face to face.

Two days later, Delvin returned to my warehouse after staying at Brigid’s house. We again engaged in many indepth conversations over cups of tea and meals. But again time was fleeting. Delvin had to prepare for the next leg of his journey and that being to the Boom Festival site in Portugal. This would be his home for the next month as he and others built the whole site from scratch in aticipation of some 20,000 plus visitors. He would also be building the Vision Gallery in the Liminal Village where a copy of my work “Manifest” would also hang alongside the likes of Robert Venosa and Martina Hoffmann.

In the early hours of the morning, I bid him farewell as he clambered into a taxi with his mountain of baggage off his next adventure.