Pandora herself couldn't make such a mess. The Blue Box has to be opened slowly, but even so 35 years of calligraphic sketches explode onto the floor. I'm not sure how this started. The Blue Box arrived from Houston halfway through the 1980s filled with chocolate mint Girl scout cookies (used to be my favorites before the Belgians taught me what chocolate actually is), Hook 'em Horns coffee mugs and who knows what else.
Most people go to a flea market looking for old furniture, vintage clothing, and classic LPs. Calligraphers may do the same, but when a table piled high with old documents comes into view, the fever strikes - hard. I tried to bargain, but there was no budging: 40 euro for a full volume of early 18th century legal documents in Latin.
What do they say about dreams coming true? "It is a dangerous thing". The new studio is set up and ready to go. The frames are built and the kozo paper is stretched. A whole crate of Golden Liquid Acrylics is on the table. Two dozen brushes, new and used, wait patiently. The sun is shining and the espresso is doing its work. The perfect moment has arrived. But where is the idea?
Two months into our Italian adventure and I could already write a novel about all the unexpected, strange, wonderful and sometimes not so wonderful things that go on in the Umbrian hills. As I brushed off my rusty Italian and put the house in order, spring has turned into a scorching summer, and Nadine and I have begun to adapt ourselves to local rhythms and customs.
What do you do when a saint looses his shrine? And what if he was not much of a saint anyway? That was the dilemma I faced when I entered a competition to design a new shrine for a medieval saint - and won! This mystery man rested for more than seven centuries in a marvelous shrine of gold, enamel and jewels. But curatorial issues won out over ancient pieties and the shrine was moved to a new museum.
I have worked for the Archdiocese of Paderborn in Westphalia for many years, doing painted wall inscriptions for exhibitions, stained glass for the choir school, monuments for public spaces and even inscriptions for two immense bells for the cathedral carillon. Paderborn was an important residence of the Emperor Charlemagne; and so it seems fitting that the archdiocese, like the emperor, should keep calligraphers busy.
How many tributaries of the social media delta can one follow at a time? March 2017 saw me sinking into the quicksands of Instagram, meaning of course that my WordPress blog was ignored completely. Time for an update, though many of you have followed these projects on the tiny screen.
If I could only play the damned thing! But writing the words to this dreamy love song is second best and probably just as fun. The Concertgebouw in Bruges, in collaboration with BruggePlus, has asked a number of artists to draw and paint on ukeleles, which will be auctioned in support of the musical life of the city.
Igor De Baecke and I have just finished a most wonderful video installation for the youth church at Hardehausen in Germany. The project is part of a complete rebuilding of the 1960s horror by the great architect Johannes Schilling of Cologne. We were asked to create a video installation on the theme of baptism for the entrance to the church.
Necessity is indeed the mother of invention. What to do with the television in the living room, that was the pressing issue. We couldn’t find a single piece of furniture that fit the space, was in budget and appealed to our rather unusual tastes. So of course, I made one instead, drawing on my love of Orientalism, romantic fakes and pure calligraphic gestures. Several people thought we must have found the cabinet at the flea market in Kyoto.
