A Stimulating Experience

Visual artist CAROLINE DEAR reports on her participation in the Kunst Hand Fest at Barnitz in Northern Germany.

THERE IS A wealth of talented artists, makers, writers, and musicians at work in the Highlands and Islands. In recent years HI~Arts has developed a suite of funding schemes which can help individuals to develop their own artistic practise (see link below).

Each month Northings will provide a showcase for the work of a recent recipient of one of these awards. Sometimes this will be a personal profile, and sometimes, as with this month’s launch showcase, it will be the artist’s own account of how they used their award.

Robert Livingston

THE KUNST HAND FEST event took place over four days (25-28 May) in the village of Barnitz, near Lubeck in Northern Germany. The four artists in the village – a painter, a sculptor, a wood worker and a jewelry maker had each asked two or three guest artist’s to exhibit alongside them. I was exhibiting in the old school, now a private house.

For me the forced contact with people looking at my work and having to discuss and explain it to them was very useful

The group are very well organised with a website, much press coverage and invitations sent to a large number of people. Over the four days there were between 1400 and 1800 people coming through. There was an interesting mixture of work combining craft, sculpture, painting, etc.

I found the people were extremely interested and inspired by my work. I have gained a number of potential customers for my email contact list. I learnt enough German to be able to explain the techniques I used and what my work was about, which was very helpful. There was also an article and photograph of me in the Hamburg newspaper and I made some sales.

I was interested to see people’s response to my work. Some people found the perspex pieces like old glass photographic plates, which greatly pleased me as I am interested in this blend of modern technique with old processes.

I arrived on the Monday and so had three days to hang my work, help others and get used to the place before the opening.

The exhibition was open from 11am to 6 or 7pm each day, with an event each evening as well. Thursday was a barbecue for all the artist’s involved to meet each other, and on Friday I gave a talk about my recent residency at Brahan Estate, while Kyra Clegg gave a talk about her work. Saturday was a specialist short film showing of new work from Schleswig-Holstein, and Sunday was poetry and talk.

I found the whole event extremely interesting and stimulating and have developed further ideas for developing the transclucent photographic works and presenting them.

For me the forced contact with people looking at my work and having to discuss and explain it to them was very useful, and helped me see it clearer as well as increasing my confidence. I also found the mixing with other artist’s and poets very inspiring in highlighting new ways of observing and reacting to things.

Some unplanned things to come out of the event were: a small concertina book, the result of walking each day from where I was staying to where my work was exhibited, and some on site work in the field next to the old school where my work was. The book is also on a website that Ute is developing (see link below), making collections of ‘10-spots’, 10 images of specific places.

Work in the field consisted of some collaborative work with Kyra Clegg, a sculptor from near Perth in Scotland, and some individual exploration pieces, working with the long grass to create subtle forms. Kyra put some of my work into a presentation she gave as ‘Further Afield’ at the Perth Visual Arts Forum, and this has also gone onto a website.

© Caroline Dear, 2006

Links

• Caroline Dear
• Ute Elisabeth Herwig