Walking the Gray Area

Yes, Sebastián, I took that picture before you posted the globe photo!…We are on the same wavelength!

Hi…..

Did you take that picture before I posted the globe photo?  After reading your text, I couldn’t help but think of this book I recently read.  I love outer space and the mystery that surrounds it all: the possibility of other life, other worlds, the great unknown.  Yet the book (below is in excerpt from it) says that we hold this unknown vastness also within our own bodies.

‘Physicists have discovered that the apparent solidity of matter is an illusion created by our senses. This includes the physical body, which we perceive and think of as form, but 99.99 % of which is actually empty space. This is how vast the space is between the atoms compared to their size, and there is as much space again within each atom. The physical body is no more than a misperception of who you are. In many ways, it is a microcosmic version of outer space. To give you an idea of how vast the space is between celestial bodies, consider this: Light traveling at a constant speed of 186,000 miles (300,000 kilometers) per second takes just over one second to travel between the earth and the moon; light from the sun takes about eight minutes to reach the earth. Light from our nearest neighbor in space, a star called Proxima Centauri, which is the sun that is closest to our own sun, travels for 4. 5 years before it reaches the earth. This is how vast the space is that surrounds us. And then there is the intergalactic space, whose vastness defies all comprehension. Light from the galaxy closest to our own, the Andromeda Galaxy, takes 2.4 million years to reach us. Isn’t it amazing that your body is just as spacious as the universe?’

I took this picture yesterday to send it to you !

It’s nice to put the world  into our home and then take our house and bring it anywhere…

I see in your jewelry this harmonious union that you mentioned.

I sometimes wonder how our planet is small, as a small island in the middle of the universe. So I stare at the sky to get the feeling that there is more space around me…The Earth is just a meeting point.

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………. H E L L O ………..

I recently bought a globe of the world, one that lights up.  I am sure that at some point I will use it as a bedside lamp.  Right now, though, it feels more like I have the world in my temporary home, which I can spin and let my finger point at a random destination.  Now that I think about it, I have always loved maps of the whole world.  Looking at them puts everything in perspective somehow and ties all the scattered fragments together in harmonious union (to bring chaos to order on one neat piece of paper!).  The feeling also reminds me of being at airports, where the whole world becomes much smaller and the people (even if they are stressed) come together from every corner.  It gives me a real feeling of unity and one-ness.

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Olá, Sebastián!

I like this piece, it makes me think of a pré-historical animal, like a trilobite. A trace of time.

As for myself…from a certain point in my life I felt the need not to lose my way back home. Like Hansel and Gretel, or like Ariadne. But I also felt the need to find my north, to draw future paths. That is why I’m interested in maps, frontiers, constellations, construction and deconstruction.

This work (Follow me)  is part of that search: a map of the city where I live with the places where I’ve been and where I’m going.

Hi…

I grew up all over the world (Germany, Holland, Malaysia, Japan, Singapore, UK), so I suppose that this has an inevitable part in my work.  But I did test [travel + work] two years ago, when I made a collection while I was in Thailand, Nepal and India.  The concept was simple:  All work had to be made there and had to use the materials from the place.  The piece on the photo is called ‘The Forgotten Land’ and is made from materials that I found on the beach, Burmese sapphires and seeds.

The most challenging thing while working abroad like this was that the materials I used disappeared into the gaps between the floor boards of my hippy bungalow and I would have to climb underneath to retrieve them.  While in Nepal my fingers were frozen while I worked because the place didn’t have heaters………..

…..how about you?

Hi Sebastián!

I can imagine you like Marco Polo! I am very curious about your experience around the world…

How these travel influenced your work?

The roots sprout in me that I make no effort! They just born! And then I take care of them, because I need to grow… And I know that one day  I can change my place…

Beijos!

Hello Again Dani…..

I am currently without a ‘real’ home (happily rootless until I know what is next).  For the past two years I have been in India, Nepal, Thailand, Holland, Germany and England.  Seeing the world is more important right now than having a fixed place in the world and I am even beginning to think that ‘home’ is a feeling we carry inside of us and not a place.  A lot of things are changing for me at the moment, sort of a quiet period of reflection………

(to be continued)