11th Aug: Our final and 4th jam session inside a sculpture

Photo: 4 August, Koen on clarinet, Toroa on book, Sen in thought.

Jam session between 2 and 4 p.m. on August 11th at Breestraat 46. This will be our 4th and final jam session in the gallery.

Watch a 5 min video clip of the July 15th jam session. Besides the sculpture "House of Worship" (more photos) you see in the image above there is also a 6 min video, 50 small drawings (along the windows) and a relief sculpture as well as work by 41 other artists in the gallery. >> Galerie de Pieter
Breestraat 46
Leiden
Last weekend, Saturday + Sunday, 11-12 August
1 - 5 p.m. (On Sunday work is removed from 4 p.m. onwards)

new sculpture for 9 people to sit inside - on show at galerie de pieter, Leiden

Photos taken in our OpenMakers studio, 2 July.

New sculpture made in nine moveable parts for sitting inside. Our 'house of worship' is on show along with 3 other works by us in the "Zomergasten" (Summer guests show) at Galerie de Pieter, Breestraat 46 (old post office building), Leiden (see googlemaps)

42 artists are participating in the show and we are lucky to be able to have such a large work here.

The show will be opened by Bartel Brussee on Friday July 6th at 7 p.m. and all going well, Toroa McGlinn will do an hour long performance during the opening.

The Gallery is open on Saturdays and Sundays, 1 - 5 p.m. and I will there on July 8th.

The show closes on August 12th.

And we (Sen, Tama, Carmen and myself) will continue working in the Openmakers Studio until September 1st.

"Room of Memories" on location

18 June: Robbert Pauwels (sculptor in another of the OpenMaker studios) helped and Jennefer took photos. First we worked without ladders and with 3 directors.

After we had the first eave in place, a manager from the Concert Hall emerged, worried that we might be silly enough as to put nails into the wooden terrace.

He then lent us a ladder and gave Sonja a mini-tour of the Concert Hall Chambers while we looked for the ladder. A truly impressive building (see their programme on this website (in Dutch only).
The front entrance dates from 1826 (see photo of this on wikipedia) and the terrace at the back is a later extension. Next to this is the "Gasthuiskerk" (visible in the photo on the left - the church was part of hospital and poorhouse in the middle ages but these days serves as part of the concert hall chambers), and while we were working we heard an organ being played which was from either this church but more likely from the one next to this, the Waalsekerk which has amazing organ which Tama played on once a week in 2008-9. The two buildings (see photo on left) on the northern side of this courtyard also date from the middle ages and were part of what was known as the Aalmarkt school which in turn served as part of the "Sint-Catharinagasthuis" complex for the poor of the city of Leiden.

And now the framework for our "room of memories" is almost finished we will work on the bed and bed covering, which will fit exactly into the inner space. The window that hangs above bears engraved texts: "Trees that yield no fruit have been and will ever be for the fire." and "Possess a pure, kindly and radiant heart, that thine may be a sovereignty ancient, imperishable and everlasting." (these and the other texts you can see in part if you stand underneath the window and look up, come from the Hidden Words by Baha'u'llah, and on the left there is a mirror which turns reflecting the inner and outer memories :)

A herd of elephants in a Leiden park

Photo: Sonja herds elephants into
the Yuchengco Museum,
Manila, The Philippines,
Nov. 2011.
About the "Nothing to Declare" art event

Performances: 10, 11 May 2012,
starts at 8:30 p.m.
Bos van Bosman, Leiden, along the path opposite the Roodborst street entrance.

This "caravan" of origami elephants, first aired in Istanbul as part of ISEA Istanbul are made out of print material collected in the countries the artist, Sonja van Kerkhoff, travelled through to get to Istanbul. Then she took the herd to the Philippines, New Zealand and then Australia. New elephants were added en route while others were retired from the herd. They will be aired for a walk for the first time in her home city of Leiden as part of Fields of Wonder's Vergezichten I open air theatre project.

Vergezichten I
Openingsvoorstelling
Bos van Bosman (entree tegenover de Roodborststraat), Leiden
10 t/m 13 mei 2012
aanvang 20.30 uur
gratis entree

More information and more photos

Open air Hotel in Utrecht, Leiden + Delft - OpenluchtHotel

Utrecht 18/19 June 2011
Leiden 21 June 2011
Delft 10 September 2011

Visitors can register to book to sleep in one of these artist-beds in the open air in one of these cities. More info in Dutch only is here: www.openluchthotel.nu our bed is an ode to Shakepeare and all of the senses including taste.

"Under perfumed flowers I lie, there I couch when owls do cry"

by Sonja van Kerkhoff + Sen McGlinn

[with apolgies to Shakepeare's The Tempest]
Peaseblossom is the name of one of the fairies in Shakepeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream who serves the Queen of the Fairies.
This open hotel location is an interpretation of the type of bed she could have made where you can see, smell and taste "pea blossoms" growing through willow branch forms.

Peaseblossom is de naam van een van de feeen uit Shakespeare's A midsummer Night's Dream die de Koningin der Feeen dient.
Dit is een interpretatie van het soort bed dat zij had kunnen maken, waarin je de door de wilgentakkenbeelden groeiende (pronk)erwt bloesems kunt zien, ruiken en proeven.

In Leiden our bed will be set amidst trees in the Kaasmarktschool, artist studio courtyard, Koppenhinksteeg 13

Crying out for culture (een schreeuw voor cultuur) and Creative Leiden

I thought I'd make this a post about some of the creative initiatives happening in my city, Leiden, in response to the Dutch government announcement to cut all culture and arts funding by 20% (c. 200 million Euros). They also announced that they will also remove the reduced sales tax for art and culture (from 6% to 19%).

In response to this a national day of protest called, "Holland screams (calls out) for culture" (Nederland schreeuwt om cultuur) was held throughout the Netherlands, on November 20th. In most cities people gathered to 'cry out' or 'scream' -very fitting given that the government just announced just a major cut to all arts funding in the Netherlands.

The website for collecting petitions of protest, enabled you to scream into the microphone, while this page has films and photographs of the day of protest.

Here is a news item with links and photos from the culture oriented broadcasting corporation, the VPRO, Photos from the protest in Amsterdam, and photos from Utrecht, and in this blog has a link on youtube of the protest in Leiden - in summary the first speaker informs us that with a 6 week warning of the increase in sales tax from 6% to 19%, theatres aimed for youth in particular cannot survive.

The Leiden city councilor for culture, Jan-Jaap de Haan the second speaker (here at 3'10" in the video in link above) spoke very well: he wanted to sing, but the orchestra is gone, so he has to scream and asks why is culture perceived as a left-wing hobby. Culture informs and shows who we are. The government is focussed on what we are not (very apt reference to the government focus on the fear of migrants and anti-Islamic sentiments).

It made me realise, that yes, without culture, expression becomes noise -yelling and screaming.

It's ironic that the news today is that yet more criminal records have been revealed of members of the Dutch parliament in Wilders' right-wing extreme nationalist party (PVV 'party for freedom' - oh so Orwellian!).
So the current cabinet remains in power, if Wilders' doesn't remove these individuals who lied about their past 'convictions' (!) from his party. Two weeks ago one member of parliament left this same party because he didn't want yet more limelight put on his past. Ironic that a government needs these people in order to remain in power.

And so to Leiden:

Creatieve Stad Leiden

is a blog run by Jeroen Maters which often has ideas or thoughts or reports on cultural related issues in Leiden.

The 24 Nov blog concerns creative ideas for some ugly architecture along a main street, and his idea there is for a vertical garden. I came across this via the Linkedin Leiden Network group in response to a call for suggestions for this empty block.

The old post office next to this block is now used by a collective of artists as a gallery, de Pieter, which focusses on group exhibitions by Leiden artists.

As a result in the down turn in the economy in the past year or so there are more empty spaces in the centre of the city, and so the artists here are able to pay a low rent to the city council for this space. Below is another arts initiative ultilizing empty shops.

Open Makers

Early in 2010 I first heard of OpenMakers which provides temporary studio spaces in the centre of Leiden utilizing empty shops.

In September + October Sen and I built our installation in one of these spaces. What is so great about their project is that it is interdisciplinary and invites artists from all levels to have the opportunity to work on a project. So far there's been theatre, tango, fashion design, poetry as well other visual artists.

Scheltema

- centre for theatre, visual arts, dance, lectures, events, etc
Scheltema is an old wool factory, converted since 2005 into an arts centre.

Oct 11th: Coming out day on the Aalmarkt, Leiden

Then Sen took the flag home and it nows flies from our Leiden-north balcony.

Oct 10th: final impressions of our video installation in the Aalmarkt studio

The five videos are:

The Tears of Rangi | Ngā roimata o Rangi,
16 min. 30 sec.

The Moving Heart | Te Ngākau Nekeneke
3min 33 sec, song: Whānau Mārama by Toroa Pohatu, Aotearoa | New Zealand

The Two Lands
16 min 9 sec., voice: Sonja van Kerkhoff

The Dark Valley,
14 min 10 sec

Heart of the Land | Te Ngākau o te whenua
3 min, 33sec

October update on our installation in an old shop on the Aalmarkt, Leiden

On October 1st Sen started building the front wall and doorway and I started work on the ceiling lights and the illumination for the suspended harakeke and piupiu.

We hope to have all the videos, sounds and lighting in place by Sunday October 10th when we will have an open day for visitors. OPEN: Aalmarkt 17, 2 - 6 p.m.

We are also on the look out for bits of carpet as Sonja will use what carpet she gets from people and the street as a layer underfoot. A layer of the land from this part of the world. Each contributor of carpet will receive a photo later showing how their carpet was incorporated into the sculptural landscape inside this structure.

"The tears of Rangi", the final video (now 16 minute long) is almost finished and I am also working on an 18 min version of the video "Heart of the Land". For the installation the most videos will be much as longer so the sounds, music and voices work more fluidly in the space. View some earlier versions of the videos on my vimeo page.

For earlier photos of this work see September 2010.
 

Update on the new installation at Aalmarkt 17

Walls are almost done. Next more work on the lighting, putting the video screens into place + work on the ceiling drawings.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
To how it looked on September 18-19 >>

The Leiden 2010 Arts Route - Kunstroute Leiden 2010

<< Left: For the annual open artist studios weekend (18 + 19 Sept) we shared our space with painter and musician, Anneke van Rijswijk who hung her drawings and paintings inside the framework of our "kainga".
Alet Kortenoeven, who was the previous occupant of our OPENMAKERS studio had drawings along the walls and a small room where from inside this you could look through funnel-like holes containing objects with the city as a backdrop. And across the window and on the television was the "there is beauty in the city" photo-magnet project. >> Info about the Leiden project

We had about 300 - 400 visitors over the 2 days!
A huge contrast to the 30 or so who visted our exhibition 5 minutes away in the Morstraat Kapsalon. However Sen liked it that he was able to read and be out of the crowds. More about our work in this show is here: www.sonjavank.com/09aderna.htm

About 150 artists showed work in around the city and one place that stood out for me was the COC exhibition. Downstairs was a poem in English and Dutch (see photo on the left) which made a strong visual and metaphysical statement against the mirror wall and upstairs were prints and cartoons by Suzanne van Rossenberg among others. All the work not only celebrated gay and lesbian identity but did it with such wit and magic.

Then on September 20th (see photo on left) Alet took the last of her work out and we had room to pull the "kainga" forward to finish the bow and to work on the curved contour. We worked most days from 2 till 7, while in the evenings and mornings I started or finished new edits for the videos. Premiere Pro is a wonderful programme and I've now discovered the open source Flick DVD is good for creating the dvd side of things.
It still takes a computer about 10 hours to render a video, which I then throw it onto a dvd and then view it the best tv we have to test the quality and then I tweak what is needed and start all over again. See some earlier results here: www.vimeo.com/sonjavank

More work on the "kāinga a roto" (boat-home)

This photo shows that we have now straightened the frames so that they are vertical and started adding permanent braces which curve around the outside.

On Friday (17 September) we put in two tv dvd monitors and had these running to decide on the size of the windows we will build for these on the inside. We've gone for making the two first windows 19 inches. We also had the marante plywood cut which will be 90 planks, each 13 x 240 cm long, placed over and along the outer structure.

At the Gamma it took a man and a machine about half an hour to do all this. This was much faster than the 6 we cut using our bench saw, where all 4 of us held the large sheets.

On September 16th about 6000 Leiden citizens registered at the Waag (medival weighing house, a few metres west of our building) for the annual, free herring and white bread (google "The relief of Leiden of 1574" to find out more about this. This article in Dutch is about this). Many of these spent a good 5-10 minutes standing in the queue outside our window. Typical comments were about how stupid we were building this, because it wouldn't fit through the door. One of the advantages in speaking English to each other while working is that, we don't need to respond as most assumed we couldn't understand them. The other common comment concerned expressions of surprise that a woman as small as I was was handling tools and seemed to know what I was doing :)

The people in the queue were of all ages, but going by their comments and the fact that they didn't seem to notice the numerous images and texts on the windows explaining in Dutch that this was an art project, obviously were people who don't visit art galleries. However we had a number of interesting and friendly conversations with some who did notice that the Leiden shoe-makers shop was now a studio + gallery for the "There is beauty in the city".



More about the there Beauty is in the city exhibition is here

Studio - Aalmarkt 17, Leiden

                    
Read about how you can participate in the "there is beauty in the city" project here. This exhibition in the window combines global views with Leiden views.

I have this studio thanks to
OPEN | Makers, a Leiden city culture project which gives artists a studio for 2 months in the middle of the city.

On September 12th the first frames for the installation Kāinga a roto (Home Within) were raised in place with Tama, Toroa (his teeshirt bears the text: Das Wort "Vegetarier" kommt aus dem Indianischen und heißt:"Zu Blöd zum Jagen") and Sen doing most of the work.

More photos will be added below documenting the progress.

Four of the five videos to go inside still need a some work but you can get an impression of these on my vimeo page. These are: The Heart of the Land, The Two Lands, The Dark Valley and The Moving Heart.

For the installation there will be no titles or credits and some will be made longer so they loop seamlessly and so the soundscape of the space works as an entity.
These plus the new one I'm still working on will be for sale as a DVD package from late October onwards.

Wanted: Beauty in the city

>> Lees het in het nederlands

"There is beauty in the city" is an exhibition of images by artists around the world in "OPEN | Makers aan de Markt" (www.openmakers.nl) at Aalmarkt 17, Leiden, 3 September - 13 October. Participants are invited to provide images of Leiden that will become part of this exhibition.

<< Photo: There is beauty in Sydney, Australia, photo by Siobhan Tarr. More images on the blog


"There is beauty in the city" is a global art project initiated by British artist, Anna Francis in 2008 and now managed by Glen Stoker. The Leiden part of this project is coordinated by Sonja van Kerkhoff.

This show will combine global views with Leiden views. Participants receive a magnetic sticker with the text "There is BEAUTY in the city" which they place in their city and photograph. For the Leiden exhibition, we invite you to come to Aalmarkt 17 to collect a magnet for 4 euros from September 3rd onwards, 3 - 5 pm while stocks last, or make an appointment via: sonjavank AT gmail.com

Choose your favourite corner of the city and leave the magnet there for others to see. Be creative.

The first 25 individuals to send or deliver their image will have this shown in a second row in the shop window, as well as having their images become part of the blog and future exhibitions around the world. At the end of the exhibition, participants can come and collect their images to keep.

Gezocht: Schoonheid in de stad

"Er is schoonheid in de stad" is een tentoonstelling van beelden van kunstenaars van over de hele wereld in "OPEN | Makers aan de Markt" (www.openmakers.nl) op Aalmarkt 17, Leiden, 3september t/m 13 oktober Deelnemers worden uitgenodigd om foto's van Leiden in te sturen, die vervolgens deel uitmaken van de tentoonstelling.

"Er is schoonheid in de stad" is een wereldwijd kunstproject, begonnen in 2008 op initiatief van de Britse kunstenaar Anna Francis, en wordt nu beheerd door Glen Stoker. Het Leidse deel van dit project wordt gecoördineerd door Sonja van Kerkhoff.

Deze tentoonstelling zal wereldwijde perspectieven combineren met Leidse perspectieven. De deelnemers krijgen een magnetische sticker met de tekst "There is beauty in the city", die zij in hun stad plaatsen en fotograferen. Voor deze expositie in Leiden nodigen wij u uit om bij Aalmarkt 17 een magneet op te halen voor 4 euro vanaf vrijdag 3 September. Open van 15 tot 17 uur, of maak een afspraak per mail: sonjavank AT gmail.com

Kies uw favoriete hoek van de stad en stel daar de magneet tentoon voor anderen. Wees creatief.

De eerste 25 afbeeldingen die worden in- gestuurd of geleverd worden weergegeven in de tweede rij in de etalage, evenals in de blog en in toekomstige tentoonstellingen over de hele wereld. Aan het einde van de tentoonstelling kunnen de deelnemers hun afbeelding ophalen.

OPEN | Makers aan de markt zet kunstproductie in de etalage. Makers krijgen voor 2 maanden een ruimte, Leiden krijgt zicht op de Leidse kunstproductie.
OPEN | Makers is geïnitieerd door Cultuurfonds Leiden.

Open Monument Weekend in Amsterdam + Leiden

On Saturday 12th of September, Sen and I cycled around Amsterdam visiting the Huburtus huis (rainbow coloured banisters with lots of light and appartments designed for single mothers of young children) and few old mansions before visiting Claire + Tahirih.


On Sunday we cycled around Leiden and these photographs are from our visit to the Leiden Museum of Weaving (Wevershuis) which had demonstrations and displays of weaving from the ages. Sen and I exhibited our art in this atmospheric museum last year. See the youtube film I made from this here


And speaking of atmospheric we now have work in another part of the old city centre of Leiden. In a hairstylist shop that has been in business in this location since 1872.
See my future page for details of where and the opening hours. There's also a page linked to this with a list of the artwork in the show.
It is on till December 31st

Exhibition in Leiden, the Zen of Japan

On till May 31st at the Expansionist Art Empire Gallery, Nieuw Rijn 94 in Leiden.