The lovely Nic Shilson set up BodyFactory as a ‘fun’ event where painters were free to paint what they wanted, and hopefully, get decent photos of it. This year she found the most amazing host site – Bodmin Gaol in Cornwall, and I was actually able to attend. We were to paint in the converted hall that is a pub/ events venue (above a sort of dungeon-like part of the restored gaol) and then photographers were to be set up all over the place. As usual I’d been too busy to do any planning/ prep/ amazing props, so had just printed off some facts and dates about the Gaol. It was the 1st place to use the ‘more humane’ long drop noose method (necks were snapped instantly instead of leaving people to slowly strangle) and the last place in the UK to hang people. It seemed sense to me that with such an unusual and atmospheric history-rich site as a backdrop, I should do something that was ‘part’ of it.
Luckily Jenn Roberts (host of the soon-to-happen Paintopia Event) had family nearby in Cornwall and offerred to share the driving costs & give me a bed, so I collected her from Great Yarmouth on Thursday afternoon, and we did the epic drive down and across England. Not a great start with traffic jams on the M25 (etc) but Heather Sharp (another painter going to BodyFactory) helped keep us entertained by phoning us with ideas/ queries as we sat still on the motorway. Jenn & I did feel we gained some time back, late that night, as we squeaked off a roundabout exit near Stonehenge JUST as the workmen were dragging a barrier with a huge long detour sign over it across the exit! Queue us speeding along the empty Salisbry plainrtoad past the stones under the stars, as a long line of road equipment trundled towards us!
On Friday Jenn’s lovely cousin, our host, Johnny, gave me a whirlwind tour of the area including a cornish pasty at Newquay, and yummy fudge near Rick Steain’s famous fish restauraunt in Padstow.
Strangely, the Matthew, the boat I walked past being hand-carved when I had my 1st job in Bristol years ago after Uni, was moored there.
I got inspired by the stone walls and finally, by Friday night, had a vague idea of what I was going to paint at the Gaol on Saturday. We met a bunch of the painters/ models for a pub meal that night, I cut a few quick stencils before bed and that was it.
We were up early on Sat as times at the Gaol were tight, with the owner hosting his own 50th (?) party there which needed setting up as soon as we were finished! Nic & her amazing crew had been up all night it seemed, covering the carpets and setting up tables. I was bang in the middle by the public entrance and delighted to find a cute ‘Body Factory’ bag as a gift for each of us which most of us then wore almost as an apron. 
Claire from Illusion Magazine was next to me, painting her ‘day job’ colleague, the multi-talented scientist we know as LL (Lovely Laurence as previously christened by me/ people dribbling over him). I hope to see him wear the glittery T-shirt I made him at some point;)- It’s a ‘Superman’ style logo which says LL Super-Mod-L – bit of an insider joke really. Several of the painters hadn’t met Claire/ LL before and I’m not sure who caused more excitement!
As always seems to happen, a few models failed to turn up or were late, but by 9am most of us started painting. It wasn’t me for once who was minus a body – I was ‘given’ the lovely Hayley Lanyon, an experienced model, to decorate. She popped on the knickers and the squared off bra cups I had cut fro her, and we started. After an hour or so, with me and some of the others painting, chatting, swapping ideas/ tips/ kit, there was a sudden hoot of laughter at something and from then on I think EVERYONE was having a ball – the giggles just kept on coming. It was a really lovely atmosphere to paint in!
Like several 1st-timers there, Jenn was really nervous, painting her soon-to-be sis-in-law (also newly pregnant – not Jenn I mean!) but I think she did an amazing Tim Burton-esque paint. Heather had created the most stunning giant wings for a battered dying trapped-moth idea, and we spent a while tying to help her figure out the strongest way to attach them, before she went off for photos and then started a totally different paint on another body to match Helen’s Flamenco dancer. Zoe’s extremely tall transvestite model Jimmy arrived late but revealed the best (and longest!) set of legs in the place, and really wow’d everyone with his poses come photo time- he teaches modelling!
I was inspired, as said, by the stone walls (built by Napoleonic prisoners – and parts of the Gaol did look like a french Chateau!) and the story of Selina Wadge. She was an unmarried mother of 2 boys who did her loving best for them, even signing into the workhouse to make sure they were fed and had shelter. Then she met an ex-marine and somehow got it into her head that he might marry her, if she was unencumbered. So she took her boys off to visit her mum, and came back to the poorhouse minus her younger, crippled son, whom she said sadly died whilst they were on the visit. But that night her elder boy told the matrons she had pushed her youngest down a well. After a search the poor boy’s body was found in a few feet of water, with the well cover put back properly to hide him. Selina then became the first person to be hung by the more humane long drop method – snapped neck instead of strangled- invented by Bodmin Goal’s hangman. So, in August in 18-something at 8 a.m., her ‘drop’ was calculated at 8 feet …… so thats the ‘8 feet to eternity’ idea. 
I hate graphics/ lettering (as I find it hard to draw) so I cut a stencil with a few of the main parts of the numbers/ letters to speed/ help me, and then freehanded the complete wording and all the swirly bits around her decolletage. The rope noose I painted/ glittered, with blood from it and the ‘carved into her skin’ lettering dripping into the stonework ‘corset’ of the building. Her knickers (I forget what Hayley nicknamed them – I think it was ‘hell pants’?) had a devilish face with her legs becoming stalagmitic pillars in the underworld to visualise all the horrors hidden beneath/ within the Gaol over time. I stuck to a red/ orange palette with some black and white. I then freehand glitter tattood more highlights, mainly of the ‘blood’ drips.
On her back I had a brief depiction of the well the poor boy drowned in, with cloudy swirls meant to be his soul escaping upwards…LL kept cracking jokes to Hayley & all around so I reckon his shy/ quiet boy image is finally blown!
The lunch the Gaol provided (we prepaid & pre-ordered) was delicious and a nice change from snatching crisps or whatever whilst working! The public & press had also started to come in and as always were totally fascinated, asking all sorts of questions and politely asking when it was OK to take photos. Even Nic managed to get a quick bodypaint done on her fiancee, and their ‘binbag’ trousers really finished it off. There was a huge range of styles/ themes – a Sweetie girl, a warrior amazon type, a gorgeous peacock glitter tatttoo and many more. Jenn (the Cornish pixie not ‘my’ Jenn) had hired a stunning customised Harley for her futuristic warrior to be posed on and we loved it – LL matched it too as a futuristic prison guard!
Hayley & I decided to finish an hour or so early to avoid the photography queues and have a short explore (it WAS March in the UK and very cold!). We found 2 of the photographers in the huge ‘empty’ hall, which just had the walls and a few of the lower outside cells standing. Wow, what a grim life it must have been – Bodmin was the 1st to use single person cells rather than all the inmates packed in together, and if those (OK, larger than expected) rooms were them – well, there was a tiny high window in 1 wall, a shelf, and a channel in the floor which I assume was for either water or waste (or both). Brrrr. I did find an angle against the entrance wall I loved where I got some amazing (for me – thanks to the lovely camera Michelle leant me which I didn’t take off auto!) shots. 
1 of the pro photographers came up and used the same angle afterwards so I must have had something:)
But whilst looking in the dungeony bit for the last photographer, we found ourselves beside Selina Wadges ‘condemned cell, got a bit too cold & freaked out and returned to the painting hall to clear up! 
Everyone ended up in the bar of the pub downstairs when we had packed away, for a quick drink and natter before we all had to go our various ways.
There turned out to be a sort of judging/ prizegiving unceremonious ceremony, and I was delighted to be shortlisted along with a number of the 20 or so artists there, some who painted alone as I did and others who painted as a team. I was even more delighted to be announced the winner, with Juliet Eve’s stunning glitter stained-glass work, inspired by the buildings windows, and Zoe Thornbury-Phillips’ Key& lock abstract on the extremely tall Jimmy placing 2nd & 3rd. I won a lovely trophy, biscuits and a voucher from the fab team at Illusion Magazine – I gave Hayley the large bottle of bubbly as she was such a fab model and really rocked the poses despite freezing in flipflops and a thong! Thanks again to all involved, AWESOME to be part of the whole thing.
VIDEO IS HERE
I mainly used Grimas & DFX paints with freehand glitter tattoos using the bottles I sell on http://bodypaintingbycat.co.uk/?page_id=1547 and glitters from http://bodypaintingbycat.co.uk/?page_id=1547
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