Time for another update. The performance is done, good. It was about time. It has been a long and strenuous business. I believe it was a good performance, I heard so at least. There was tension and this is a good thing in this case. But if anything, I found out that I am above all a sculptor and a story teller. Performing, or the world of performancing in the larger sense, does not make me happy. I went out of my comfort zone and that is a good thing, but now it is time to go back. Retreat into my safety zone, where it all starts and ends, where there is an endless source of power and fire to keep me warm.
from heat
to fire
to bronze
In between the rehearsals I had some time to play in the studio and to let myself go, only hands no head. This is when wonderful things happen. And they did.
One day I experimented and I liked and when the experiment was finished I looked and I liked. And the experiment asked me: `can I be a bronze?` me: `No, I don`t do bronze, I don`t believe in bronze and definitely not for experiments` So went home and I slept (or not) and went back to the studio and asked ` why?`. It: `because I need it` me: `but if I do bronze I will abandon white in my work` it: `I don`t need white, I need bronze`. And I looked and looked and thought and thought. And thought again, while the decision had already been taken. I could have skipped all the thinking, really.
So the same day I packed up this one and another one and the next day drove to the foundry in Belgium. The other piece being a surprise for a very dear person who deserves nothing less than bronze. So I can not say more about that one for the sake of the surprise.
Of course an experiment is never just an experiment, it is mostly an expression of something that has kept you busy for a long time already and been dying to come out. In this way, this new work is the successor of many other experiments.In fact the longer I work the more I am confident that all my work is organically connected, it steadily turns in circles around some key points but at the same time there is a clear forward direction.
This weekend is open ateliers in Den Haag centre and then………….a long period of nothing, how I look forward to that!
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my peek box for open atelier 2014