Walking the Gray Area

A boundary/border/frontière exists when territorial systems identified by their own sets of norms (cultural, legal, etc) confront one another.

(a quick post)

New surroundings, different people mentality, different landscape, architecture… while quickly checking messages at the academy the slightly different placings on the keyboard… Even my laptop is presenting me the German version of YAHOO instead of my usual English one, and all those German advertisings… NO, NO, NO, I want my usual English and Dutch – they add to my home feeling!!!!

I really like the picture Carolina, of your hand on the screen covering HANNA’s hand on the keyboard! It’s exactly my feeling of how similar cultures often seem very alike but then there’s that not quite perfect fit – in this case a couple of Hanna’s fingers not quite covered by your’s.

I’m too exhausted to fix up a picture with this too right now but I hope to get into a  routine here very soon.

It is not China, its a Chinese restaurant in Chile (Limache city). I was there today.

I feel that all this staging it’s for re-create their own culture topics. The Chinese restaurant, pagoda, and lagoon with red fishes. Do they fell at home? What do we do to feel like at home? The home sweet home you said before…

You hang your favorite picture.

You paint the walls.

You put a flower in a vase.

You put pictures on the fridge.

You leave a magazine in the bathroom.

Our land.

Are you going to re-create your “own-you” in Idar-Obertstein?

Many greetings

C.-

Hi Carolina,

The Chinese pagode in Chile does have something pretty ridiculous except for those Chinese owners that appear to have been ‘stranded’ in Chile. Especially when the idyll includes plastic garden chairs – they have always been my idea of the cheapest and unstylish, untasteful things to put in one’s environment!

Hi Andrea…this post it’s about barriers….limits and borders….

Si te escribo en español, ¿entenderás? Lo hago a propósito. Pues el lenguaje es una barrera, un territorio que nos separa, una isla rodeada de peligros.

Si te escribo en español quizás conoces algunas palabras y algo entenderás. Tópicos como: Olé, Señorita, Adiós, Hasta luego.

Y si entiendes español, pues estaremos en territorio común, un sin fronteras, y podremos conversar…

*I will be out until saturday. See you soon!

it’s working your inner-magnet?

(I was in the south of Chile these last three days. I will show you some pictures)

Hi Carolina, the ‘Human Magnet’ (me) has been almost attached to the stone cutting workshop  the last week, sacrificing my fingernails, skin on my fingers, wet and damp from the spraying water of the grinding wheels, but in return I now have a fairly sizable pile of little cut stones, some of them even finished being polished. My greed hath no end! The little pieces of now mostly rock crystal and smokey rock crystal seemed to attach themselves to my greedy hands as if by magic or magnetism! This week for a couple of days I will be able to participate at a workshop here in the old (fashion jewelry) chain making factory. It’s in the stage of planning for becoming a museum, but now the machinery still works but is out of business so to speak.

I noticed a while back that I was being attracted to the idea of working with chains here because their pattern in a way also very much reminds me of cutting pattern lines for clothing. Maybe not logical except in my mind… So I’m afraid the Human Magnet will also be carrying around LOTS of samples and examples of chain stuff!!!

What I have also been ‘collecting’ here away from home are warm contacts with very lovely people connected to the school. It is like a very cozy place in this strange town to feel comfortable, understood and at home. This is a very valuable experience to take back with me.

By the way, I very much like your drawings and envy you being able to automatically turn to this medium as holding on to your impressions and connecting and transforming them to your thoughts like you do.

Till soon, Andrea

Picking up charcoal from a burned tree in Riñihue, south of Chile. Flying home with a selection of two pieces of charcoal. Drawing with them. Thinking.

Charcoal v/s chains. Let’s see what we can do with them.

Hi Andrea! How are you?

I have been thinking about opposites…black_white//human_nature//creation_demolition//hand_machine…and I have been doing paper! The last two years I was working as architect, so I have a lot of building plans. I took one of them to transfrom it into pulp, and then in paper. I’ts a gray paper…

Hi Carolina, nice paper! Considering the many drab or ugly buildings that exist, just think of  all the beautiful paper that could have been if they hadn’t been build but their plans mashed to pulp. I love the burnt tree from which you took charcoal to make drawings.

I just returned yesterday evening from a back and forth to Amsterdam for a couple days. That was interesting! As the Human Magnet I picked up very clearly on my own feelings. It was a terrific ‘high’ coming back to that city. I felt lighter, happier, happy to be able to live there, and being a part of it. Even though I like mountains very much (I think), and Idar-Oberstein is in a tight vally between smaller mountains, I just felt I was able to breath deeper in the flat wide landscape that Amsterdam is in. Also the mind frame and way of people. This made me realize just how much I have moved away from my German roots to my “foster roots”.

After reading Susanne Klemm’s comment about appreciating her Swiss roots much more now I came to realize that it is just the opposite with me. I have actually never felt patriotic or proud about being German, had never thought about it when I lived there. Too young as a 5 year old when we left it, and not feeling particularly German growing up in Canada except for having German parents, I had to get used to being German when I was 17 and often felt that a part of me was missing because I didn’t have the same stories of TV programs, books, songs, or school lessons the others did. Later when living in Holland I was happy to be European. It felt bigger and wider somehow.

The Gray Area for me is actually a metaphysical space rather than a physical area or color. It’s the in-between areas filled with stuff like unclarity, confusion, insecurity, undecidedness and so forth. Physical gray is for me just a color that can be relaxing to the eyes from too much color, it can be calming, or just nice to wear. It’s everywhere, even as floor color in my apartment because it connects colors well. Maybe that’s it! Maybe a gray area is needed to connect things?

Ciao, Andrea

View over part of Amsterdam harbor from the building of where my job is. W-I-D-E ….. take a deep breath!

Hi Andrea….these two palettes were in my desk for years, and I found them today, and what a nice coincidence the names….how they choose them? Maybe now we can paint ourselves as “online gray”, or “network gray”.

likes//dislikes///I like the idea to connect things. I like mountains. I like gray. I dont like flat cities. I like Amsterdam. I like to be a little bit german. I am chilean but I don’t identify with it sometimes. I am here but sometimes I would like to came back to Barcelona. I’am architect but I prefer to be jeweler. I like the contrast between opposites.

Hi Andrea….How do you feel travelling from one reality to onother? How do you perceive  the distances/ the light/ the language/the architecture/ the people?…(I think that will be in the gray area pieces!)

Now, the pictures…_1_ in my studio (also home) windows I have attached pictures taken from my studio (also home) in Barcelona_2_actual view from my window _3_drawing of nº II _4_house in the countryside where we are planning to move soon, and where I go three times a week. I can say that at the moment I feel overlaped by images of different places. I know where I am, but I’m also in other places at the same time. Again in the no-place,  parenthesis.

Totally stressy… So sorry, Carolina, but this back and forth every weekend is and will stay really time-consuming. I feel I do not have enough hours to keep up on everything. Even downloading photos, gettin them ready for posting, for the blog is more than I can do. Most of my hours each day here, even on the weekend to catch up for lost time  (and dead tired coming back to my temporary ‘home’) are at the school and grinding mills. The stone process is quite slow. Also have to keep up with my professional contact work even on the side lines (and internet connection here at the apartment is SO slow). No time for drawing just for fun or feeling like taking a walk in the fall forest. But the wheels are so addictive, and the time at them can be hell for your hands and back, but the humming sound creates a meditative bubble that just envelopes my mind and is totally calming. So with this in my life right now you will probably not hear that often from me from now through November.

There are things here around the behavior of people that every now and then just make me so happy I am not living on this side of the border any more! Actually, a big gift to be able to spend time here like this to really ‘get that message’! It still will never take away the Gray Area of being immigrant but will hopefully soften the edges somewhat.

Your studio view towards the mountains is lovely, and the summer light soothing. Must be very productive!

Enjoyment and adventures in the gray area to you,

Andrea

Hi Andrea

I’m starting to join some elements. Charcoal, hand made paper (the one you saw), and enameling surfaces…..All of them came from our conversations. I have in mind words as “limits _ borders _ contrasts”.

I don’t know if you notice that for me it’s easier to use images to explain my thoughts, so, I will add a picture! The upper part is a piece I did when I was living in Barcelona, it was about “bird houses”, and was linked with the abandon places in that city. The other picture is a construction where I participated in the years as architecture student.

The limit here is the scale. In both works the topic is “to give a place to stay”.

I would like to find a way to connect our works.

I have two sets of materials. Maybe I can send you one, and I work with the other one…..and you can do the same….well, it’s an idea…….I know you are quite busy now…so I will wait for your answer.

Hi Carolina, it’s good that you are starting to get closer to what you want to do. I’m working here on stones in thoughts of what I could do with them in the future, what kind of theme(s) would fit etc. And while that is going on my emotional and mental “body” is dealing with the migration theme while my physical body is trying to fit into the time plan! Since I have had thoughts about the emotional-cultural aspect of migrants for new work even before WGA came on my path I am quite positive that that is the direction my work for this show will take me. Especially since that is what I feel most strongly about, less about actual borders. My way of working usually ends up being a playing with materials and shapes and details that remind me of the exact feeling to translate. That is actually what interests me a lot – different layers of possible aspects that in the end are connected or comparable even though they may even be quite different. For example these two pictures taken in the old chain factory her in Idar-Oberstein behind the artist-in-residence apartment:

Seeing the beautiful old radiators made me think of the feeling I have for my old home country Germany – lovely (to remember) but not functional (in my new life) or connected to the time now anymore.

Hi Andrea. There are too many old buildings in Idar_Oberstein? I have that feeling.-

I’m always watching the city where I live (now is Valparaiso), I’m very interested in knowing what it’s happening with the old buildings and the new ones. Here is very common to see how the old buildings are disappearing because a fire, earthquakes or just because they have been abandoned for many years. The law it isn’t very strong to protect them, and of course, it’s a best business to build from zero, so many, many buildings are disappearing. It’s quite sad. It’s very different of what I have seen in Europe, that seems to be the opposite.

As architect, is easier to go inside these buildings…at least to be a witness.

I took this picture some days ago. This building withstood one of the majors earthquakes of Valparaiso (1906), it’s a solid one!, and now all the parts have been taking away to be sell as wood, parquet, windows and doors.

I have the impression that the building itself it’s like a big person, and somebody it’s taking off his clothes, layer by layer. It’s a complete nudity.

Paint//Plaster as a Copihue relief (National flower of Chile) //Modern MDF panel //Wood //Adobe

Hi Andrea:

I took some pictures in Valdivia, I was there (again!) to participate in a barter fair. It was in the old train station, that now it’s rusty and abandoned.

Abandoned

Spanish tower//A tree//Old train//Telephone office

Looking for traces, time, signs of life, intuition.

Traces of migrations, nature, travels, communication.

People.

“What makes Argia different from other cities is that it has earth instead of air. The streets are completely filled with dirt, clay packs the rooms to the ceiling…”

I wanted to undress my past, take off the clothes of my memories, layer by layer, as if it were skin, painfully. Developing images, discovering hidden feelings, destroying to build.

Hi Carolina,

While you’ve being breaking down the layers or removing them to get to the core I’ve been playing with the idea of overlap. How would it look if our lifestyles were theoretically overlapped as layers, or our paths that we take in everyday life — what kind of pattern would it create?