968. Upfest 2017 (27)

This is a wonderful and very large piece by Nol from this year’s Upfest, which was sprayed on the wall of a school next to South Street park. The thing about these walls in local schools is that they are only accessible during the festival. After that is only pupils, their parents and teachers that get to see them, which makes them rather exclusive.

Last year Nol worked with Edo Rath in the car park opposite the Tobacco Factory, but Edo couldn’t make it to Upfest this time so Nol had to work solo. Edo was there in spirit though, and just to make certain, Nol had attached a face mask of Edo to the lift platform…a nice touch.

This was a large undertaking, and it was something of an accomplishment by Nol to complete this wall over the three days, given the rain interruptions. I managed to catch up with him a couple of times and asked him how much pink paint this wall would take. He said that typically a can will cover about one square metre. He used seven cans of pink for this piece. That is a lot of paint.

The phrases ‘good things come to those who wait’ and ‘fortune favours the brave’ come to mind with this piece. During Upfest, I never got to see this piece completed, which actually happened with many of the pieces this year.  However I returned during the week after, and thought I’d see whether this piece was on view still to the public. It was not. But I just happened to be there at the exact time the contract firm were collecting the lift, and blagged my way into the school yard to take some pictures of the final piece. Such luck, and there were two other pieces I got to photograph as well.

This is a bold, fun and larger-than-life work, and ideal for a school playground. Nol is a gentleman who seemed happy to talk while he was working, and this is some wall.