I’ve been trying to incorporate my love for text in my art for some time now. Apart from this work, I didn’t come up with anything that satisfied me. Until now. Although I’m still pretty insecure about it’s quality (exploring new terrain), I think I’m on the right track with a small series of prints I made recently.

I focussed on making short, multi-layered texts, open for personal interpretation. Which was actually a lot harder then I had imagined. Then I started thinking about the best visual presentation for the texts. Designed to spark a train of thought.

So far I have four prints that work for me. All of them are 50 x 40 cm. in size, printed in black on white paper and are framed behind glass (I needed reflections).

Three of them are based on the same principal idea and are to be shown at Toegang Vrij in The Bergkerk soon. I didn’t have time to document these prints yet, but due to the reflections of the glass and the subtleness of the prints, they are going to be extremely difficult to photograph correctly, so you’re better of seeing them in real life anyway. Just go there!

The fourth print is a bit of an oddball really… ‘Oneliner galore’ can somehow be construed as a graphical interpretation or titlework for this new series of short sentences. It is quite different from all the others I keep coming up with, but I felt it deserved it’s own print. When looking at it up close for some time, the lines and the letters seem to come alive… The photo’s below (yes, that’s me and my studio in the reflection) don’t have the same hypnotizing effect as looking at the real thing, but I wanted to give you a general idea, so here it is:

From May 29 until June 27, 82 Deventer artists (including me) present themselves at the Salon in the Bergkerk, Deventer. In the weekend of 19/20 June, 62 of these artists (including me) also open their studio for the public in the Atelierroute. Both Salon and Atelierroute are a part of Toegang Vrij, organised by Kunstenlab once every two years.

All participating artists are mentioned in a free magazine, including their studio adresses and a map. The opening of Toegang Vrij is on the 28th of May, 20:00 hrs. You’re welcome! Check here for more details (in dutch).

I made some brand new works for the exhibition in the Bergkerk. I’ll probably post them here soon, although I’m not sure if I can get the essence of this work across through the internet… I’ll try to get some decent photo documentation.

It has been a while since the presentation of the installation by Sandrijn van der Horst and me at The Incident Room #1 in R10, Zwolle. After brainstorming and testing, we’ve created an installation work where soundwaves are bending and guiding reflections of a water surface. More information about the project can be found here.

I now have some new documentation available; photo’s and video by Sandrijn. Hence this new post.

More photo’s overhere.

And here’s a video registration of our installation. It’s an edit, the complete registration is about 36 minutes. Due to compression for online use this isn’t the best possible view I’m affraid… but it still gives a reasonable impression. In case you’re wondering, you’re looking at a projection on a wall. Tip: hook up some descent speakers or headphones, before playing. Some of the frequencies are very low.

For the bonus experiment below we removed the mirror from our installation setting. This considerably reduces the light output and therefore it needs a fully darkened room (which wasn’t available in R10 by daytime) to be effective. But the interference patterns are totally different (and beautiful!), so I wanted to show you this early development in possible future projects anyway. Again, not the best video quality and this time there’s no sound.

Jeannette and me decided it was time to let go of J’ee-haw!, our collaborative art project moniker. There haven’t been any new J’ee-haw! projects since 2005 and 5 years of coma should be enough to pull the plug… right?

I’m now taking steps to take down the J’ee-haw! website and release the jee-haw.nl domain. All J’ee-haw! projects are also archived on this website, just do a jee-haw search.

In Okkenbroek you’ll find four hiking trails with a length ranging from half an hour to one and a half hour. They’ll take you to some of the most beautiful spots of Salland. With the input of Landtonen your walk gets even better.

Several artists, writers and composers were commissioned by Landtonen to make a poetic impression of these walks.View the impression, read the text, enjoy the images invoked. And then follow the same trail. You’ll see things through different eyes, hear with different ears and smell with a new nose. These poetic impressions were made in a limited edition. They are for sale in Noaberhuus Okkenbroek and in Kunstenlab Deventer.

But… because Noaberhuus is closed on Sundays (which are excellent hiking days ofcourse), I was commissioned to design some kind of device to distribute the poetic impressions (including a map) in another way. Could have been a very simple assignment I guess, but I decided it was more fun to distribute them with sound. Partly because Landtonen roughly translates as ‘showing land’ but also as ‘land tones’. And partly because of my earlier involvement in Landtonen.

So I took the assignment a step further and came up with four cabinets that play the flute when you open them. All four cabinets are playing a different tone. So when you combine them, you actually have a very basic musical instrument to play with! The construction is completely mechanical and works with bellows, no electricity needed.

As you can see there’s a red, blue, yellow and green cabinet which corresponds with – you guessed it – the red, blue, yellow and green trail. The outer casing is made of beechwood. Since Okkenbroek is a small village located in a rural area where decency (and social control) is still common good, you pay for your poetic impression by putting the right amount of money in one of the canisters on top. This system is used by farmers throughout the area. The same decency should also prevent extreme vandalism. This is why the cabinets are sturdy, but not vandalism proof.