The Last Supper (Day)

Well, the day has finally arrived. My final 24 hours in Germany are almost up, and tomorrow I catch the train from Enschede at 10:18 am. By 5:00 pm I will be in London, and in slightly over a week I will be home (and 22 years old). The fact that I am here in Germany and on this fellowship program, that I have spent the past two months here, simply astounds me. I don’t know how I came to be in this position, but I am extremely grateful for having been blessed with this opportunity. My host and “boss” of sorts, Gudrun, is hard to leave. She engages daily with the Kunstverein with a steadfast devotion, and never shies away from dealing with the inevitable last-minute problems. I hope that in my future career I will be fortunate enough to work with others who are equally in love with their work, and who are kind and generous.

As a last hurrah and thank you to her, I finally made my brownie recipe! (Gudrun loves brownies – she bought four packages of the “American-style brownies” that were a weekly feature in Aldi during American week. They were actually pretty good, considering they weren’t homemade, although the bagels were definitely a miss. We are having some guests over for dinner tonight, just the people who I have spent the most time with over the past few weeks, so it should be nice.

I bought my last bread rolls from Lohner Landbäcker, did my last shopping trip at Aldi, took a last little bike excursion, and probably won’t be going back to the Kunstverein before I leave tomorrow. It never hits you that you will most likely never see a place again until the months and years start to pass by, but I hope that someday I will see Gudrun again. If she is ever in Minnesota, she knows who to call!

On the other side, there is a laundry list of all the things that I have missed and will be happy to have back in my life. At the beginning: fro-yo shops and Target. Yes, Target. God, I love that store. I’m ready to be surprised at how great a volume of coffee I receive for the same amount of money as in Germany, to say hello to having everything spread out in the typical fashion of the car culture-determined city, to have my own bike back(!!!), and to just be home with the people I love. It’s hard not having any friends in a foreign country, but at least there is the internet to help bridge at least a small amount of the gap.

And seriously, when someone first calls me or sends me a text, I’m not going to know what to do! I don’t really miss that technology all that much, though.

Here are a couple of great pictures of Gudrun’s front garden. It’s an ongoing adventure, but we tackled some more of her overgrown shrubbery two days ago. The whole scene is still basically a jungle, though. : )

I haven’t done a whole lot of drawing lately, but I’ll definitely update from my Great Britain and Ireland travels when I get back to the states! Knowing me, there will be at least a few sketches.

I was an extremely strange child.

I don’t have all that much to update on for this week. The opening party for the new exhibition + conjoined with my going-away party is this Sunday. Saturday morning is brunch at some woman’s house (I sound so polite, I know, sorry – she won me over with brunch, whoever she is). We’re encouraged to bring stories to tell, so I have to get on that. Maybe I’ll tell my mom’s original story about the nook fairy. : )

Um, it was finally a little rainy today and yesterday, which was good for the plants. It only rained this morning, which I was definitely chill about. Usually I prefer when it doesn’t rain in the morning, but since my schedule is flexible in Germany I just bummed around a bit longer to wait out the weather before heading out. Alles gut.

So, why was I an extremely strange child? I just had a lot of quirks. First of all, I was obsessed with Nancy Drew. (Not so unusual). Whenever I went to Barnes and Noble with my mother to pick out a new book, though, I had to check to make sure that something “bad enough” happened to Nancy in the end. It was always in the second or third to last chapter, so I knew where to check. Examples of what was good enough: essentially anything near-death. Not good enough: when she didn’t get kidnapped, stuck in an elevator with chloroform gas, tied up, etc. I’m serious. I loved reading the entire book, but only if something really bad happened to her at the end.

And then, dreams. I frequently dreamed of being a princess or a lady in a castle, and occasionally of being a feisty fighting lady. But I had to get kidnapped and held for ransom, or threatened with death, or something. The most vivid scenes from my dreams of these story lines are thinking about the cells that I was detained in, how many chains were holding me to the wall, if I could move, and the like.

And then, reading the newspaper. I only read crime stories. And I only liked reading crime stories about women. If the story was about a man being the victim, I was immediately bored and stopped reading the article. This actually happened (and still happens) with choosing television crime show episodes. If the victim on the show isn’t female, I won’t pick that episode.

There you have it. Several reasons that attest to my weirdness. I was watching part of this crappy animated Snow White movie and realized that my favorite scene from childhood was, go figure, when she was tied up and about to be turned into a stone statue by the creepy mustached antagonist. He had blue skin and shot red lasers from his eyes – the show producers definitely took some liberties with the plot…

Happy Thursday, friends! I went to the figure drawing class again last night and put the drawings up on my art blog (reinasan.tumblr.com). Check them out! I also bought an adorable mini plush elephant from the overstock store. It pays off to rummage through bins of crap, I promise.

Tay

Broken Circle, Teaching More Art Classes, and Summer Heat

Gudrun and I trespassed on some private Dutch property today. It was great.

Now, the backstory: We drove 45 minutes to get to Emmen, a city in the Netherlands, only to find that the entrance to Robert Smithson’s piece “Broken Circle” was closed, with no one in sight. Robert Smithson is the artist who created Spiral Jetty in the Great Salt Lake, so he’s kind of a big deal. And he has this great piece in the middle of Dutch farmland – go figure. Anyways. We had already driven all that way, and apparently since the property (a nicely sized lake) is privately owned, you have to pay 5 euros just to get in. So, we… snuck in under the barbed-wire fence. I know, you don’t have to tell me how classy I am.

The piece itself is really beautiful, as you’ll be able to see in the photos. At first I thought the entire length of the lakeshore was part of it, but Broken Circle is only on the far side. The rest of the machinery and piles of dirt and sand are gouged up from the middle of the lake by the property owner and sold for profit.

Here are some photos (the birds-eye-view type one is from that big green mound on the hill that you see in one of the pictures. You can climb it, as there is a spiraling path hidden amidst all of the bushes.):

Walking towards the piece (in the distance and difficult to see.)

Standing on the end of the “broken” circle.

View from the top of the green mound. The previous photo was taken from where Gudrun (the black speck) is sitting.

Aside from today’s adventure, Tuesday and Friday this week I taught more art classes for children and tried not to shrivel from the heat. Last night was the worst so far, but I don’t think it will be repeated. I also killed about 20 flies today because those things are so annoying. It was either keep all the doors and windows shut to prevent flies from coming in, and suffer in the heat, or compromise with flies and fresh air. The latter option was worth the additional annoyance. I’m definitely writing in my Kunstverein essay about how much my fly-swatting skills have improved over the past two months!

It’s hard to think that I only have a week or so left until I leave to explore the UK for a few days. And then I’ll be home! 18 days. I’m sad to leave Gudrun, Lukas, the Kunstverein, Neuenhaus, and all of the great people I’ve met, but it’s time to go home. : )

No art updates right now; I made something, but it’s a special present so I can’t put it on the internet! I’ll make more soon, though, so don’t worry too much.

Ciao!