27 January 2009

Bright Trade Show, Frankfurt Germany














Bright Trade Show was the first stop for our traveling group exhibition, 'Where On Earth Have You Been?'

4 to 6 hours from Amsterdam is Frankfurt, Germany. Again, the proximity is just tasty! Frankfurt is an entirely different culture and has a really nice skyline. It isn't all fabulous though.



The city is intensely brown. Various Shades, but brown brown brown.







There is good public sculpture for the most part, but Lil'Shy commented on a particularly ugly one of a Giant Glowing Blue Euro Symbol floating in a lake of Golden Stars. It was awful and she summed it up nicely in her very french English, 'Zis has to be ze most fuckhing uglee zculpture I have eeever see, it es sooo fuckhing terrible.'
















I met up with my longtime friend Sonja Bergstrom, we used to work together at GOOG design in Denver. she is from Germany and is back living in Frankfurt now, her place, Bergstrom Studios is the bomb! She is so gifted and the visit to her place was a highlight of the trip. She and her partner Rafael make these really great sheep stools. She's going to be a mazillionaire from them.
















Let's see, what else. The streets were very clean, except for the homeless people, but they were clean too. In a weird way they didn't look homeless, well accept for the couple we saw 'shooting up' in broad daylight in the middle of downtown. That was weird and really stomach churning. I always flirted with trouble and don't mind a few grinds in my coffee, but I can't even look at hard drugs, Thank God. I ate a big hamburger.














The Trade Show was cool. We skated the bowl, and it was cool. There were some nasty lines being drawn in there by some of the amazing skaters. Good skaters are like Kung Fu masters.




















The Where On Earth Have You Been exhibtion was well received. Many people told us it was their favorite thing at the entire event. I saw some other amazing stuff. Saw Jon Fellows new Hession Mob skateboards in the flesh. Hooked up with my sponsor and grabbed some new
kicks.


















Jeroen and Lil'Shy were very fun to travel with. We made a good team, curating together and working the whole time side by side in near harmony. We even got our party on one night.




It was fun, dancing, and drinking hard, except for Jeroen who is one of those great people that doesn't drink or do any drugs whatsoever and just has the best time out. What up Vin Comparetto and Andrew Novic! Lil'Shy and I however got hammered.


Then, somebody I know
proceeded to absolutely 'smash' the club. At one point, she even had some boys in such a frenzy that she wrote on this guy's teeth and all over his face. When I came to try and herd our little princess into the taxi, the dude threatened to kill me, but I told him it was hard to take him seriously because someone had just tagged his grill.




Here he is the next day. 'Es everybodys frenz, no?' He was cool, Shy was the coolest.

Hopefully we'll be able to move the exhibit to other locations soon and keep adding more artists to the collection it was so impressive to see everything up on the walls. I was really really happy with it.

The most popular pieces that we showed were the Kenjon Bajus piece he made from 'working in centimeters', Evan Hecox once again, the Dutch artist, Shoe, and the Jeremy Fish original painting I bought at the show Ryan Riss curated in 2006 at Andenken called, My My Hey Hey.


German countryside was really nice, rolling hills and old farms.















Fancy bathrooms in a gas station in Germany were like the chill room at a rave. Sweet smells pumping with ambient music. They even had these self cleaning toilet seats that were so 'german jetsons'. I'd never seen that. Then again, I've never paid 50 euro cents to take a huge dooker at the filling staion in Germany. I felt a little out of my league in that bathroom, a little under dressed. It was almost like a limousine ride that bathroom.

When we got back to Amsterdam I felt really glad to be 'home' which is exactly when it hit me, 'I live here now, with my family. This is my home.' Such a good feeling, I really hope we can stay and stay and stay.

As far as Where On Earth Have You Been? We need to make a long list of artists to add to our collection and start searching for funding.

Anyway, as we say in Germany, super ciao!

09 January 2009

Frozen Waterland and New Year Mayhem














Well, it is very very cold here right now and the beautiful canals are freezing, or frozen. The boats are frozen into the grachts and as I rode my bike North of Amsterdam and into the heart of the nearby Polder farm lands the water in the Markermeer looked like a true Arctic Sea.

The population is still out on their bikes, though not for entertainment.



I've started to dread long rides that I know I have to make at night...or really at all. Hopefully it warms up soon.


On the flip side, I have been able to do some nice outdoor pond hockey and also enjoy the really amazing outdoor rink that the city maintains which is beautifully located in the cross shadows of the Van Gogh and Rijks Museum on the Plein.















Things have finally settled back into normalcy after the holiday season. Addison is back in school. Andrea has returned home after a nice visit. It was so cold though that we weren't able to show Andrea everything we wanted. Note to visitors: Come when it's warmer, or bring your ice skates and a thermos or whiskey flask.
















I've yet to stroll into the Red Light district in the winter to see if the working girls still have on their bikinis. :-)


Oh, and New Year's Eve was crazy here, there were so so so so many fireworks all over the place, and nobody seemed to be 'officiating' . Everyone, everywhere was lighting off fireworks, it was bordering on scary, but it was beautiful. At the party where I was, there were probably 40 different groups of people lighting off fireworks, not just little black cats either, full on shoot into the sky and explode into a giant color flower bombs! At one point I just had to laugh there were fireworks going on all around and people were dancing and kissing and the railroad tracks were on fire. It was mayhem.
















Anyway, because I've been longing for some warmer and longer days, I made a little slideshow of pictures that I took in the summer / early fall. I have it over on the www.matherkunst.com