Horror vacui
Tuesday, 5 October 2010
I spend three days rebuilding a garden house of friends who live in Drente. It was built 25 years ago from left over windows and old wood and it looked like a sculpture. Ten years ago it began leaking and because i liked the little house and because i was spending a vacation there, i repaired it. But last year it really began to fall apart, so another friend took it half down. He wanted to rebuilt it, but then he got sick and couldn’t do it. I offered to finish it, and that is what i did for the past three days. Apart from two second hand doors, which form one side of the house, the rest is made of parts that still could be used of the old version and of left over wood (an old bed and some floor parts). The real problem was to re-use the stained glass, that was the highlight of the old version, but that fell into little pieces when it was taken out of its frames. But it was beautiful weather this weekend and i enjoyed the work very much. I have no pictures, but i will ask my friends to sent me some. Maybe my description misleads you: our children call it a scrapheap.
At night i read the art books that they have there. The woman is an artist and she has a small library of art books. My favourite book is “The spiritual in art”, which i could lend, so i will write about that later.
What i want to show you today are some drawings made by a boy that these people happen to know. He started making 3D maps when he was only six or seven years old, and he still makes such drawings. His name is Julian van Spankeren and he seems quite succesful with his art. He even has a site. I got some postcards with his drawings:
In that library used to be a book about Adolf Wolfli. I couldn’t find it this weekend, but somehow he was on my mind often during the weekend.
I love to make drawings that are inspired by the works of Adolf Wolfli. I have been trying this for many years now, and it feels as if i am slowly going somewhere. the result doesn’t reeally look like Wolfli’s works, but i don’t want to imitate him, i just want to make something that has a somewhat same feel. Of course, my drawings are still in black and white; to make them in colour (and on larger paper) is the next step.
Here are three drawings that i made last night in the spirit of Adolf Wolfli:
