the city of ". 's-hertogenbosch" is pronounced "den bosch". Since we had to change trains there, we had a quick lesson in Dutch prononciation.
We slept like heavy fossil rocks last night, making a good dent in the jet-lag. The hotel serves a mouth-watering breakfast, with all sorts of Dutch cheeses and hams, fresh baked bread (wowie!), homemade yogurt, etc. We took a bus ride over to Karinna's studio where we set up the work space for Daniella's encaustic workshop. Over the next 3 days she will have 12 students from around the Continent.
This afternoon we visited the Textile Museum, and the De Pont Museum of Modern Art, both quite sensational. The textile Museum was in an old woolen textile mill, and consisted mainly of students actively working on both old textile machines, as well as new ones, like laser cutters. Yesterday I was thinking of my brother, Tom. Today it was my brother Dick who would have loved this fascinating place, thanks to his long involvement with researching textiles for the company he worked for. How I wished he could be there with us today!
The De Pont is huge, and reminded me a lot of Mass MOCA in Williamstown, MA. Similar huge spaces in an old brick building, with an intriguing combination of both huge and tiny galleries. I LOVED their current show by an artist named Sofie Calle. She did a massive installation that went for many rooms, called "Take Care of Yourself". The quote is from a long, email break-up letter she received in 2000, from some guy she had been seeing. That letter became fodder for this show. She asked 107 women to take a copy of that break-up letter and interpret it for her in an artistic way.
The result was a wildly funny, creative, eye-opening show where the letter was staged as Kabuki drama, set to music, parsed by editors, grammarians, journalists, attorneys, photographed in a huge variety of settings and poses, and became the subject of numerous video clip performances and readings. One woman even taught a parrot to say assorted cliche phrases from the letter, then filmed the parrot swinging on a little trapeze and squawking "take care of yourself" and "I'll always love you in my way.". Hilarious!
Now I'll take a dinner break, and hope we can get you some photos this time!
-- Posted From My iPad
Location:Tilburg, NL
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