The story of the 1st ever Sculpting Extravaganza TierraMitica 2018

We TierraMiticans are devoted to our path of evolving and exploring the new art form of truly Collective Art. Putting our home, money, hearts, bodies and time where our mouths are, we invited ANYONE who wanted to spend a whole month with us to learn our way of sculpting world class sculptures of any size with cheap, readily available materials within days rather than months or years and to participate in a truly Collective Art event from November 12th to December 12th 2018. Participation was 100% free, including accommodation in our jungle paradise, all meals (in the most gourmet place in any jungle) and all materials.
Following the Mythic parties of previous years, where we painted murals and sculptures collectively with people from all over the world, both artists and ordinary misfits like us, truly collectively with spectacular results (again, free for all comers), we wanted to share the sculpting part as well, so that people that wanted to attend both events could paint in the 2019 Mythic Party (15-21 January 2019) sculptures that they had created. Our objectives were:

1. To sculpt amazing sculptures of a higher level than ever before for our hand sculpted jungle amphitheater, The egg of life (El huevo de la vida), truly collectively, in the same way that we have been painting collectively in the Mythic Parties of the last few years.
2. To explore, learn and discover how to teach ourselves and random people with no sculpting experience how to be confident to sculpt world class sculptures by themselves within just one month, and how to work collectively to be able to create in their homes and neighborhoods amphitheaters, playgrounds, garden and park sculptures and much more, enhancing their environments and inspiring people about what is possible and the creativity inside them.
3. To manage to maintain high, loving, togetherness energy for the whole duration, becoming family and close friends with complete strangers.
4. To explore and evolve true collectivity in art, as well as the art of working, creating and coexisting in happiness and love with anyone with a similar intention.

On November 12th, we found ourselves a total of 38 participants, 19 TierraMiticans and 19 guests, many of them with no connection to TierraMiticans whatsoever. We started the day with a tour of our paradise and proceeded with a meeting to explain the event and its objectives and to envision collectively the sculptures that we would be creating. There was only one predecided guideline; the theme of adolescence, its issues, dilemmas, choices and paths.

We decided to try for 2-3 rounds of sculpting, so that people would get to try everything on 2-3 different projects each. For the first round we divided into 6 teams of 6 people each and two general teachers, problem solvers and coordinators: me, Mikis Hasson and Simon Kingsley, our art event coordinator.
We decided on 6 sculpture scenes based on ideas voiced in the meeting and agreed to by every single one of the participants, from here on called the Extravaganzers!

Theme 1: Escape, a scene where a girl is helped to escape from her 2nd floor window by her boyfriend while a couple of her friends are waiting and making out, and another friend is crouched morosely with a bottle of booze and a cigarette, exploring rebellion.

Theme 2: Huevos (eggs), a scene where the father is distracted by teenagers throwing him eggs and mooning while giving him the finger while he is angrily brandishing a rolled magazine. The scene explores cheekiness and mischief of adolescence and required a whole building frontage with a roof to be sculpted, shared by both scenes.

Theme 3: Options, where 2 boys and 2 girls are entangled in intermingled sexual energy, with symbols of every kind of gender and sexuality option presented to teenagers nowadays floating around them.

Theme 4: Sangre (blood), where the issues of pride and shame about puberty, menstruation and newly found sexuality are explored. It comprises of a proud warrior woman using her menstruation blood to war paint a proud, erect teenager, while behind their backs a boy and a girl are hiding themselves and their private parts with heavy books, symbolizing religion and societal rules while flowers are sprouting nurtured by the dripping menstrual blood.

Theme 5: Mariposa (butterfly), where a pubescent girl is unfolding giant butterfly wings, emerging out of a flower where she was cocooned, while a teenager is masturbating at the sight, a wolf chest ripping his breasts and a wolf snout tearing through his face. A shy peeping Tom teenager is sneaking a look from behind the flower petals. The scene symbolizes the polarity between innocence and dark, primal sexuality.

Theme 6: Juguetes (toys), where a girl and a boy stand back to back in front of a couch, she putting lipstick on, wearing her mom’s stiletto shoes and her bra (stuffed with tissues to fit) while he pours whiskey into his mouth and smokes, dressed as a punk. On the left side of the sofa an obese boy is smoking weed with a big bong, while on the right side an anorexic girl swallows a magic mushroom while checking out her smartphone. Spread on their feet are sad, abandoned toys of childhood. The scene symbolizes the transition into adolescence where our interests change and our toys hold no more magic for us.

Each Extravaganzer chose the scene they most wanted to work on, and group leaders were chosen for each of the 6 groups.

The night ended with a great dinner and a wild jamming party around the fire in our destroyed and vandalized WWII Willys army jeep sculpted fire pit in the amphitheater. Since our sculpting technique involves wire mesh figures, plastered with plain cement, both economical and widely available materials requiring minimal equipment, we started the next day with instruction on how to make heads, bodies and hands using wire mesh. Then, each group chose a position on the wall and started planning and executing their sculptures.

Each group was also allocated cooking and dish washing shifts so that we all shared taking care of ourselves. We also started a cooking competition to make shifts fun rather than a chore and to elevate the taste of the food we would be sharing. The quality of the food was exceptional, and we would all vote on every breakfast and dinner (lunch being just sandwiches), but after a few days we gave up on the competition because it was becoming obsessive and excessive and taking too much energy away from the sculpting. Nonetheless, the teams chose to compete with themselves to do the best they could to delight, and the quality of the food as well as the inventiveness and variety remained outstanding throughout.

Soon it was obvious that six of the participants were not as passionate about the sculpting as the rest, being absent most, all or big parts of the time, leaving their teams short handed. One or two of them were a little more present than others, but generally the attitude of the particular group was of being on a free month long vacation in the jungle rather than any real desire to learn to sculpt and to participate in the event. In addition, the understandable inexperience of some of the group leaders and the coordinators (it is the very first Extravaganza after all) caused great delays in the process of metal meshing. The metal meshing had to happen within 4-5 days, allowing the first 6 scenes to be completed within 10-14 days so that we could proceed faster to one or two more rounds with new scenes and also do free standing sculptures.

But in the first 3 weeks, only one scene, Sangre, was fully finished, Options were still at least 2-3 days away, Mariposa 4-5 days away and Escape had not yet managed to put anything on the walls, Huevos were still in wire mesh, both having spent a lot of their efforts in the building facade hosting their consecutive scenes. Juguetes were far behind as well, struggling still with mistakes in their mesh, causing distortions in the plastering.

Just a couple of days before we had all lived the symbolic shamanic wedding of Caroline and Metsa and the super cool party that ensued and had awesome fun, but the realization was dawning that it was becoming extremely unlikely that we could finish the first round of sculpting, let alone manage to make a second round or cover the entire surface of the giant egg amphitheater. Most of our initial objectives apparently unattainable, we had two choices: to continue and try to finish the first round with as much fun was possible or to go into truly epic, mythic energy and go for everything!

We asked the 6 guests who were not really in any sense participating in our passionate and engaged energy to leave us and we all agreed to do the impossible: For all remaining Extravaganzers to merge together in one group, to help each other and to join into the deepest collectiveness and togetherness possible! We decided not only to give everything we had into finishing all scenes, but to also collectively cover the whole egg perimeter with more scenes. First, a big scene spanning over 4 meters wide with two separate sub-scenes:

Theme 7: Caminos (paths), where a college boy in uniform is choosing to enter into his doctor father’s life, persona and future, climbing inside him through a zipper on his back, while a young Indian teenager in college uniform is open mouthed at the landing of a mythical Icarus in front of the butterfly girl, but also hesitating to enter her traditionally, Sari clad pregnant housewife mother, holding a toddler on one arm. This scene symbolizes the different life paths presented to us as we experience adolescence.

Theme 8: Icarus, an ancient Greek mythical figure that made wings to fly to the skies but dared to fly too close to the sun, the wax holding the feathers on his wings melting from the heat of the sun, crashing to the ground for his hubris of trying to fly too high. This is a majestic free standing sculpture, symbolizing our abandoned and betrayed childhood dreams of greatness and of living mythic, epic lives.

Theme 9: Destruction, a young skateboarder standing on a broken, trampled cross smashing the eggshell with his skateboard, symbolizing the rejection of society, rebelliousness and destructiveness experienced by many teenagers.

Also, we added another figure to the Juguetes scene, an ecstatic guitarist Rock n Roller playing an electric guitar, his portable amplifier trampling on more sad, abandoned toys. Once more, every new item was voted enthusiastically by 100% of the Extravaganzers!

Just eight days sculpting from scratch to create all these new scenes and finish the rest, including the scenes that had not even mesh on the wall! Mythic indeed!

What followed was truly epic and magical: Like one body we pulled our resources, everyone jumping in wherever they were needed. A face here, a shoe or hand there, clothes, items, sanding, meshing, plastering and fine sculpting anywhere on the whole perimeter we were called to or needed, or anywhere we felt inspired to contribute. We were going down to the egg right after breakfast, staying often until dinner and then returning to sculpt under lights late into the night.

Buzzing with energy, singing and dancing, encouraging each other, we raced to complete all these life sized sculptures, stopping only for our second symbolic wedding and party, that of Gregory and Julia. Both couples had specifically requested for their symbolic weddings to happen during the Sculpting Extravaganza. With flowers, decorations galore, great food and wedding cakes made with love and lots of dancing and partying, both weddings seemed like storybook, enchanted, mythic events.

The days after the wedding, just 3 left, were plagued (or blessed) by torrential rainfalls, streaming mud everywhere, saturating and crumbling not yet dry sculpting. Yet the fun, the buzz, the camaraderie and the love never abated; One on top of the other, covered in tarps, pieces of plastic and makeshift garbage bag raincoats, we worked passionately together, helping each other. No arguments, no discord, no dissatisfaction or loss of oomph, just laughter, fun, hugs, dancing, singing and super hard work. People that had never sculpted before were doing whole, intricate faces with amazing expression in just hours.

Guess what? We achieved the impossible! Together, as family, we did three times the work in 8 days with 32 people than we had done in the 3 weeks before with 38! We covered the whole egg perimeter plus a huge, free standing winged Icarus! And we all had enormous fun!

All objectives achieved beyond our wildest expectations! (with various hiccups and mistakes along the way!). We finished at 6pm on the 11th, exhausted, but proud and happy. We parted the next day with tears and hugs, family for ever, with growing romances and deep friendships.

We shared together a truly mythic adventure. We slayed our dragons, saved princes and princesses, came more close than if we had shared a friendship of 20 years and created an amazing monument that will soon be painted collectively for a result that we cannot even imagine yet!

And we have decided to do it again, next year same time, and to create collectively a big, functional playground comprised of baby animals of any species, maybe with slides down elephant’s tusks and whatever we dream up collectively with the people who show up. We will also do a giant, 30ft sculpture of a shipibo grandmother, housing a storage room, a toilet and a staircase up to her head where one would be able to oversee through her eyes the whole Plaza La Cuna, representing the whole circle of life from conception to pregnancy, birth, childhood, adolescence, adulthood and old age.

Can we do all this in one month with people that have never sculpted before? Watch us fly! Because together with other misfits like us, just ordinary people with no special talents, we can all rise to greatness, vibrating in the two divine energies acknowledged by every religion, spiritual practice or culture: TOGETHERNESS / ONENESS and CREATION / CREATIVITY.