Tonight Beth and I leave for the US again. Pretty sad really. I'm not ready to go... We've had such a wonderful trip!This past week has been jammed packed. Mark and Robby left last Wednesday, and Thursday and Friday were spent installing one of Beth and my collaborative art pieces. In Halle, all of the sidewalks are made of little stones which were built many many years ago by laborers. Since then, many stones have fallen out and formed little holes. Beth and I decided to create glazed ceramic
"stones" to fill the holes with. We were inspired by the HUGE amount of graffiti in Germany which often seems very destructive to the beautiful old buildings, so we decided to make our stones serve as a more productive kind of graffiti that actually helps the town. We made each stone have our initials or logo design and then invaded the city with them. We also laughed about the funny parallels that American art infecting the city has to the way American culture has invaded Germany. Since the installation, some of the stones have even been stolen, which is especially interesting to me. This means now our public graffiti is invading someone's personal home space.
I also installed my clay houses outside over two weeks ago and have been documenting their changes daily. Since I moved them outside, I have not touched or altered their presence and I have been really interested in seeing how other people and nature have affected them. With in the first week one entire house was stolen. Although I was a bit disappointed, it is also really interesting to me. I really wonder where it is now! Maybe my unfired, unglazed, impermanent house is in someone's house! Maybe it's somewhere else outside.... The
remaining 4 houses
lived through several very heavy rains and although they lost many details, still stood strong. Last weekend someone moved them all for a big festival to honor Handel (who is from Halle), but they were still in the center of the festival and at one point had a choir of 40 singers, a small orchestra, and 20 dancers performing around them! I got so many wonderful pictures of people
interacting with them. After the festival someone attempted to move them back to their original spots in the garden, but in the process two collapsed. Surprisingly though, even the piles of collapsed walls were left and I have seen many children playing with them. This project has really made me realize how much I enjoy public artwork and work that the viewer really has an affect on. I've decided to put all of my images in a book to document the project, and I even have a friend who is going to continue taking pictures for me after I leave.
Other highlights of the week have been Christian (my neighbor from above) driving us around the German country side in his 67 Mustang (...talk about irony), seeing a crazy parade led by a famous German Punk Singer to honor Handel, and sleeping on my roof last night.
One day left...I hope we go out with a bang! But first....packing! Yikes!
I look forward to seeing all of you wonderful people back in the States soon!
