In every single religion and spiritual practice the notion of the divine, god or anything you wish to call it is the notion of a creating force or entity, the creator. So, very simply put, creativity and creative energy is divine energy and we had discovered that when one accesses their creativity they actually access the most divine part inside them. We needed to explore this in a dedicated and intense fashion, and if we were going to fail and close down anyway it wouldn’t make that much of a difference, but if we did not dare we would stagnate and we would not be embodying our own advice, to live big, mythic lives of daring and creativity, to trust ourselves and the universe and not live lives of anxiety and worry. So we built our art studio thinking “build it and they shall come”! We named it Chocopelli as a combo between Kokopelli, the ancient Hopi god of fertility, music and mischief, and chocolate, believed by indigenous people to be divine nourishment, and who can disagree with this! After all chocolate produces similar endorphins to an orgasm, how good can it get?

Since Chocopelli finished construction right at the end of the year, and Mikis and Lis had decided to get married symbolically on the day of their common birthday, 20th of January we decided to combine celebrations with the inauguration of Chocopelli and the publishing of Mikis’s first book “A Mythic Voyage” and to hold an open party, inviting anyone that felt like joining us to come and celebrate with us, opening the doors to our jungle paradise TierraMitica to absolutely anybody that would show up for a five day free party. After all, the notion of the divine is also one of oneness, togetherness, union. We also decided to spice it up by inviting Luis Amasifuen Tamani, a young Peruvian visionary artist of extraordinary talent and a friend to paint a mural on one of the walls of the art studio during the event, while we all enjoyed his masterpiece come to life in front of our eyes day by day. Luis accepted with pleasure, but when we invited another great Peruvian visionary artist, Juan Carlos Taminchi, who also brought Julio Cabrera Suncion, a friend artist of his, there was a reaction from Luis. He was not used to painting with other people, being a dedicated workaholic painter spending unlimited hours a day improving his art. The objections quickly dissipated, each artist was given his own wall and the Mythic Party 1 was such an incredible event that we all decided on the spot to do it again next year, in a way more spectacular fashion. The three murals that just appeared in front of our eyes within a few days were true masterpieces, and the three artists had worked simultaneously but each one alone in their own inspiration bubble. Since the beginning of human civilization people have been painting murals on walls that were already there. First in prehistoric cave walls, then on temples, palaces, cathedrals, homes.

We would build a custom made building, La Astronave, the spaceship, and we would invite 20 artists from all over the world to paint on the walls of the spiral building, each one a frame of the myth of the Grandmother Ayahuasca as told by the tribes of the Ucayali river for thousands of years, each one painting a part of the myth, together creating the whole story. It was our first inspiration for collective art. During the Mythic Party 2, January 2016, we were determined to let each international artist to paint anyway they liked, to find their own expression and with their own style their interpretation of their vignette of the myth, but also to attempt to inspire them to meld the paintings together in one coherent whole, a collective painting comprising of their individual walls stretching over sixty meters from the outside walls, spiraling into the interior walls. We opened our doors again for a free five day party to anyone who wanted to join in watching this time twenty murals being created in front of our eyes, this time not out of sight of one another as in the first Mythic Party, but right next to each other in one dedicated building made just to be painted: A monument to the Grandmother Ayahuasca, a feast of visionary art and a celebration of collectiveness and togetherness. This time we had about 55 guests all together, but now there were 7 of us and our community have grown so much closer. We stretched ourselves super thin, worked like maniacs and our bet paid off big time! Artists from different parts of the world started their individual walls, often judgmental or annoyed by other artists styles or capabilities but they ended up inviting each other to paint on their walls, collaborating in breaking the rigid lines and melding all paintings into one, continuous collective masterpiece, and the rest of us observed the magic all day and jammed together around the fire every night. There were some issues with some serial complainers at first, who were not understanding that we were offering free food, accommodation, paints materials and our 24 hour a day work for over 60 people in a small place with few resources. But togetherness won, and by the end of the event we all felt that we had lived a unique, unheard of magical experience.

We were hooked and decisions were made to go even further with this.

Elated by the magic, seeing in front of our eyes how usually individualistic artists opened up to collaboration, we decided to build walls big enough for 120 murals, the walls forming a giant baby figure that would be big enough to be viewed from space and we would try to get to TierraMitica 40 visionary artists every year and finish the project within three years in parts, creating a whole plaza full of flowers and beauty in celebration of human creativity, art and togetherness in the process. We drew 3D plans and even made a scale model of “La Cuna” (the Cradle or Origin), our planned collective art plaza. This never happened, simply because we ran out of resources, but like always every obstacle is exactly as it should be, a new opportunity. We chose to construct a 20ft giant sculpture of a pregnant mother earth goddess, embellished by smaller sculptures of birds, animals, insects, flowers. The sculpture would include a chamber in the belly where two people could lie down and experience the womb sensation, inclusive of recorded womb sounds on a sound system and UV lights, with a blue light on her forehead. Mythic Party 3, La Mama was on!

None of us had any idea how to do this, but we were getting bolder and bolder. After a series of misadventures, we, the Tierramiticans, a bunch of misfits with no idea what we were doing and just our passion to drive us, completed the huge sculpture in just 80 days from scratch, inclusive of weeks off for workshops or rainy weather. Made of metal and concrete, she sat proudly in the lotus position to be painted once more by visiting artists and guests. But this time we all painted as well, no longer observers. Each night we would all come together to discuss the direction of the painting for the next day, projecting pictures of the progress and joining everybody’s inspiration and every day we would each paint what we chose but also helped each other, taught each other until within just five days she emerged glorious, a true product of collective art.

By now, we were hooked! Not only us, but our guests as well, ordinary people of all ages and countries and visiting artists alike. It was a totally different experience; Collective Art was being born, and each one of us experienced equal collective pride and ownership of the result. All five visiting Peruvian visionary artists returned the next year, enthused about the possibilities that working collectively brought. So enthused, in fact, that for the Mythic Party 4, 20 of them came, excited by the sparkle in their colleagues eyes. Now, La Mente – Concepción (The Mind – Conception) is ready. A whole building this time, of a giant sculpted brain itself covered with sculptures of conception, from the thought to the dream to the animalistic instinct and from the sperm to the creation of new life, is housing inside a whole recording studio for Wet Pussy Productions, the recording of our songs, written and performed by the same bunch of misfits. It has been made and sculpted by each and every one of us, 15 misfits in all to a whole different level and speed than La Mama.

It took about 3 months to build and is not only many times the size of La Mama and a fully functioning building with toilet, storage room, foyer, recording studio and control booth but also holds many intricate sculptures all over it, each one the collective work of many. This time it was not “you do the face I will do the hand and she will do a butterfly on her shoulder” kind of thing. This time we fully melded, multiple people cooperated on each sculpture, each area, each face and each detail as well as the continuously evolving vision of the whole. This time different people would work on the same area at different times, each one would contribute to the vision and each one of us is equally proud of each detail on this amazing functional monument. The level of sculpting rose exponentially in every single one of us, elevating us and enabling us to do complex, ambitious sculptures in mere days. And this time we also painted collectively, as one, forming our collective vision as we went along, each one of the 45 participants with equal authorship and right to pride over the final result. There is no piece that is disconnected and personal. Everything is one. Human divinity, uniting ourselves and our creativity in one force.

In 2019, for the Mythic Party 5, as always from 15-21 January, we went even further in scale, complexity, creativity and collectiveness. Having turned Plaza La Cuna into an area of celebration of collective art and life itself, we have built a 140 seat amphitheater in the shape of a giant egg with a multitude of scenes in the theme of adolescence on the outside, the narrow part of the egg housing the stage and the big part housing the semi covered amphitheater. Again we have completed it in a few months with the limited means of the jungle, hand mixing every ounce of concrete. This time, however, we did not build and sculpt alone.  We invited artists and individuals to visit us and stay in TierraMitica for the Misfits Sculpting Extravaganza , for one month, absolutely free, people could come and sculpt with us, bringing more and more open collaboration and inspiration. The Extravaganza was an amazing success, resulting in the most spectacular sculptures that were ever made in TierraMitica and we painted it all together during our annual free event, which was already the 5th edition of the Mythic Party. The result is phenomenal, as the photo gallery below demonstrates. We passionately believe that Collective Art is not only a new, revolutionary form of art that has never truly existed before, but also a new way to unite us and bring us closer as human beings.