Best about Bilbao

Sorry for the lack of posts! I escaped the grey skies and went on holiday to Northern Spain to visit friends in Santander. I was very happy to see my friends again and to catch a bit of warmth and sunshine (though Northern Spain isn't as hot as you might think, the weather is pretty temperamental and they do get quite a bit of rain. Which means it's very green; the landscape is just stunning!)

We started off our trip in Bilbao. Best things: €1.20 for a glass of good wine and the pinxtos, sort of like the Basque version of tapas. They are served on the top of the bar and you just have your pick. Most of them include ham, seafood and/or tortilla. Mmmm!!

Equally as good are the museums in Bilbao. Of course The Guggenheim is the most famous, but we also enjoyed the Fine Arts Museum, where we visited an exhibition of etchings by Goya (entrance is free on Wednesdays!).

∧ Frank Gehry's Guggenheim is worth a visit no matter what's on. But as it happened David Hockney's exhibition A Bigger Picture was on show! I had missed this exhibition at the Royal Academy in London, so I was thrilled that I was offered a second chance. 

The exhibition focuses on Hockney's fascination with the landscape. It shows his latest iPad paintings, as well as older works that has lead up to these works. Over the last 10 years Hockney, who has lived in California since the 1960s, has spent a lot of time capturing the scenery of his native Yorkshire. I was especially impressed by the watercolors he did there. He has a great technique and the colors are so vibrant for watercolor. It was also amazing to see that he used a gadget like the iPad for a theme that is so traditional as the landscape, and that he managed to paint on the iPad in the same way as he would on canvas; they are undoubtedly Hockneys.

A few of his (large format) watercolor sketchbooks were on display as well. I personally find it difficult to draw or paint the 'bigger picture' (landscapes, rooms, environments in general) and I found his sketchbooks so inspirational that I bought A Yorkshire Sketchbook. The sketches are quite simple, but very effective and convincing.

The gallery-part of the Jazz Gallery

I've got a little group exhibition coming up over at  A Shot in the Dark - one of Cardiff's nicest coffee cafes. The exhibition is part of the Jazz Gallery, a weekly jazz night that aims to provide a platform for local jazz musicians and artists. The other two participants are Dan Hamilton and Nicole Miles, with whom I share a studio at the Morgan Arcade Studios.

The opening is Sunday May 13th at 20.00 and there will live music by the Dino Plasmati/Carlo Fraccalvieri Open Quartet. It would be lovely to see you there, but don't worry if you can't make it, the exhibition is on till August 4th.

It's off to Brooklyn

It's off! To Brooklyn! My submission for The Sketchbook Project. I suffered from the 'blank canvas syndrome' for a long time, but when I had finally decided what to do with my theme ("the grey side of life") I did enjoy it a lot, experimenting with different techniques and just making silly portraits. Instead of using the ultrathin paper of the sketchbook I used paper made from recycled elephant poo (!!), which I then hand bound together using a saddle stitch. I'm not super pleased with it and next year I'm going to do everything differently  (of course :-), but it definitely got the creative juices flowing. And I guess that's what it's all about. Here are some sneak peeks..

The sketchbooks will go on an exhibition tour in April, starting in New York. Then my sketchbook will travel, along with a staggering 5000 other books, to Chicago, Portland OR, Vancouver, LA, San Fransisco, Boston, Portland ME, Toronto, Philly, Atlanta, Austin, Melbourne and last stop London.

Fossilized dog turds and chicken noodle masks

I lied when I wrote earlier that EVERYTHING was closed for three days in Copenhagen over Christmas. On boxing day the National Museum opened its doors again. We visited the section on Prehistoric Denmark, where we enjoyed Viking runic stones, coffins containing preserved human remains and clothes, and lurs, ancient Nordic wind instruments. But the high light for me were neatly displayed fossilized dog turds. 9000 years old!

Of course I couldn't resist paying a quick visit to the 'ethnographical collection', in my quest for more information about my masks. They had lots of masks on display, but alas... I did make a few quick sketches though. I especially liked this mask, as it appeared to be a chicken mask made from chopped up noodles!

Dogs on show

Totally forgot to mention it here on my blog, but in their quest for new sub-urban owners my dyed show dogs have traveled to Almere and Lelystad this December! They'll be for sale during the Kerst & Carry exhibitions, where you can buy perfect Christmas gifts from young designers and artists. Everything is hand picked by curator Renée Reijnders, so you know there'll be quality stuff. For more information on directions and opening hours visit the Corrosia! website.

 

If you haven't seen any pictures of this dyeing dog craze, have look here or here or here (I tried drawing the Chow Chow that looks like a panda, but it just looked like a panda!).

The Tomb of the Unknown Craftsman

As soon as I set foot on London soil this last Friday, I hurried myself to the British Museum for the Grayson Perry exhibition The Tomb of the Unknown Craftsman. What a joy it was!  

Perry curated his own show, displaying new as well as older works next to artifacts that he had picked from the British Museum's vast collection (it contains 8 million objects!). I know the man mainly for his ceramics: vases on which he makes beautiful drawings and collages. But I loved seeing works in other media here. I love the themes in his work like shrines, magic, maps, 'scary figures', gender, authenticity ("I love fakes for they make us think about what is is we see in the authentic") and craftsmanship itself. I love how he draws from folklore and outsider art, and mixes tradition with the contemporary. I also love the fact that he talks about his art in a pretty straight forward, unpretentious way and the way he sees himself as an artist: 

"Part of my role as an artist is similar to that of a shaman or witch doctor. I dress up, I tell stories, give things meaning and make them a bit more significant. Like religion this is not a rational process, I use my intuition (...)"

As you can tell by my multiple use of the word LOVE I really LOVED this show and I urge you to go and see it if you have the chance!! It's on until 19th February 2012.

∧ The Rosetta Vase.

∧ detail of  The Rosetta Vase. 

 

∧ The Frivolous Now.

He made the sketch for this vase the evening before decorating it by doodling away in front of the telly. 

∧ A dish from c. 1700. You can see where he gets his mustard.

 

 ∧ One of the most impressive pieces was this immense tapestry (almost 3 x 7 meters),
depicting religious and secular pilgrimage destinations.

∧ Perry went on a pilgrimage himself, to Germany, on this motor cycle, with on the back seat his 50-year-old teddybear Alan Measles (“the benign dictator of my childhood imaginary world”). 

 

 

∧ He made sort of a pope-mobile construction for Alan. The bike is on display at the British Museum, but the teddy is a replica. The real Alan is far too precious to be displayed! 

 

∧ Inspired by pilgrimage tokens/souvenirs Perry designed one for his and Alan's own pilgrimage. Several tokens were on display including this contemporary one from Japan:

"Perhaps more than any other object this hand towel embodies the spirit of this exhibition. It is fitting that it comes from Japan, a country that seems to have a remarkable ability to blend ancient traditions with modern technology and popular culture. Two Hello Kitty characters, created for merchandising in 1974, are dressed as traditional Japanese pilgrims (o-henro-san) in white robes, sticks and straw hats. This towel was sold as a souvenir on the island of Shikoku, famous for its 1200 km pilgrimage route taking in 88 Buddhist temples. So here we have an object featuring modern cartoon characters and a ritual dating back to the 18th century AD coming together on an object carried in most Japanese women's handbags."

Do It Yourzelf!

Tomorrow the semi-permanent exhibition ZELF! opens in Villa Zebra, Rotterdam!! The exhibition consists of six art installations that have been created specifically for 3-6 year olds. One of the installations is a little hospital where kids can create new human beings with the (fabric) body parts I made together with Renée Reijnders and Geeske de Graaff. The way the exhibition space is designed is a work of art in itself, so you should really go and take a look! You can either go to the opening at 10.00 and have coffee and cake, or at 17.00 if you fancy a drink and a snack.

Another day at the office

 

I'm knee deep in embroidering and sewing for a project for children's museum Villa Zebra in Rotterdam. A few years back I made, together with Geeske de Graaff, life sized body parts from fabric for the exhibition Completely broken at Villa Zebra. The kids could put the body parts together with poppers to create new human beings, ANY WAY they wanted to. The cool thing about the body parts was that there was something 'wrong' with all  of them: one is cross eyed, another one has pimples, another braces. Some limbs have wounds or are broken, there's a beer-belly, a leg with varix, a foot with six toes, and so on.

Now the dolls are going to be part of a semi-permanent exhibition at the museum. Therefore they first needed a good wash because they were dirty. Very dirty.

 

Pretty disgusting, innit?!  

Some of the dolls need to be repaired. Especially the felt we used became a bit rough after being handled by hundreds if not thousands of little hands.

Villa Zebra also commissioned some new body parts, which I'm creating with my friend Renée Reijnders. This baby in distress will be added to the collection, along with a dog with 5 legs, a trunk with an 'outie' bellybutton, the arm of a very clumsy painter and more. Grand opening will be at the end of November!