Month: April 2016

Organic floor carpets Projects

Alles Stroomt

Post author By Sabine Bolk
Post date April 14, 2016

Titel of work: ‘Alles Stroomt’

Location: Festival Into The Great Wide Open (ITGWO) on Vlieland (NL)

Technique: Pattern made of cooked rice with a stencil

Year: 2014

In the beginning of May al artists who got selected for Into The Great Wide Open 2014 where invited to check out their locations, meet the forester Erik and get a small preview with Here Comes The Summer. It was pretty cold, and being home only two weeks after the residency in Cambridge it felt a bit strange being away again to another island. But I also felt so fortunate that this was and is my job!

The project idea I send in was to make a ricecarpet that would be best visible from a high lookout. The pattern for the carpet would be based on a local popular motif. During my visit to the island and afterwards I gathered a lot of information about Vlieland and the specific location for my carpet called ‘Sjouwersmanbol’ (something like “Porters-man-bulwark”). On this viewpoint is now an ex-NAVO range. From this high steel construction you get a great view over the island, the sea channel between Vlieland and Terschelling, the sandbank Richel and a lot of water. The natural viewpoint was used by cargo porters to spot the incoming ships through the sea channel. They then had enough time to run towards the harbor and secure the shipment.

Looking at old maps and so called “spekmatten”. “Spekmatten” are floor mats made by sailors. On board they kept the needle in the grease so it wouldn’t rust. I noticed one clear motif, a symbol used on every map and I also found it on a lot of other things on Vlieland: A Windrose.

I made a ricecarpet with the title ‘Alles Stroomt’ (Panta rhei / “Everything flows). The windroses all pointing north. I used 4 different motifs to make 35 windroses out of cooked rice. During the three days of Into The Great Wide Open, 5 till 7 September 2014, the ricecarpet slowly disappeared while the birds eat from it.

Forest exhibition with Emmy Dijkstra

Post author By Sabine Bolk
Post date April 14, 2016

Titel of work: ‘Forest exhibition’

In collaboration with Emmy Dijkstra

Location: Enschede and Etten-Leur (NL)

Technique: Stencil on (wall)paper

Year: 2012

In 2011 me and Emmy Dijkstra started working together. The collaboration began as an online residency. On a blog we shared our inspiration and worked with a shared theme for each new work. In one year we made four paper installations and a lot of small sketches together and apart from each other. We were looking for a space to show our works, when reading ‘The Summer book’ by Tove Jansson gave us the perfect location: the forest.

We showed our works first in Enschede and later that year in the forest ‘De Koekoek’ in Etten-Leur. The exhibition was shown one day and was build up and down on that same day. For the opening we read out a chapter from ‘The Summer book’ in which a little girl is exploring the island she is staying on that Summer and finds an exhibition, hidden in the forest.

To read more about the forest exhibitions and our ongoing collaboration visit edijkstra.wordpress.com

Pictures by me and Rense Nieuwenhuis

Organic floor carpets Projects

Hill of beans

Post author By Sabine Bolk
Post date April 14, 2016

Titel of work: ‘Hill of beans’

Location: De Kapeltuin, Breda (NL)

Year: 2015

In 2014 I got a suprize email inviting me for a kind of residency at De Kapeltuin, a community garden, in Breda (NL).
They saw a ricecarpet by me in the very beginning of my still short career. Contemplating how to proceed with my ricecarpets, my temporary ephemeral organic carpets, after my projects in England, it come at the perfect moment. I didn’t just wanted to make a work on location, I wanted it to grow on location. I made a plan and happily it was excepted.
The carpets that I normally make are made with materials I just buy at Toko, supermarkets and organic stores. In Cambridge and London I experimented with waste from pubs and given materials from homes. Resulting in different, interesting works on maybe even more interesting locations.

How can I make my work more sustainable, is the question I’m asking myself. So I’m making my own materials. I’m planted the seeds and with the harvest I’m making my temporary carpet.
So sowing the seeds, reaping them and taking care of the plants till harvest. A seed to seed project.
To stretch this cycle even further, the seeds I use for the temporary carpets, are selected on the quality of the seeds. So people can take the seeds with them during the Harvest festival and plant them again.
They not only take a seed with them, but also a little bit of history about De Kapeltuin. Every seed together tells the whole story. So in this way, people get invited to share.
It’s more than a harvest to eat. It’s a heirloom, captured in one seed.

Hill of beans is an ongoing project;

I presented the project;

in 2016 at Reclaim the Seeds in Wageningen

in 2017 at Open Source Event in Tilburg

& every year I try to find new locations for it to grow;

Hill of beans-beans grew;

in 2016 in Uden and Breda (NL)

in 2017 at Cityplot in Amsterdam, Uden, Breda (NL) and during the exhibition Rita McBride: Explorer at WIELS (B) in the project Lonely fingers

in 2018 in Utrecht, Uden and Breda (NL)

To keep ‘Hill of Beans’ growing and continuing, I collect the harvest beans after every season, creating my own little ‘Hill of beans’-seedbank in the process.

Installations Projects Work on paper

Little Nana’s Cape

Post author By Sabine Bolk
Post date April 14, 2016

Titel of work: ‘Little Nana’s Cape

Location: De Grote Kerk in Breda (NL)

Technique: Wallpaper installation

Year: 2013

In the Summer of 2013 I made a 30 meter Wallpaper installation for an exhibition in De Grote Kerk in Breda (NL). I made with stencils a pattern of different butterflies connected with folktales about death. Some butterflies are seen as the returning souls of lost ones (the Monarchs during Día de Muertos), others as bringers of bad news (the Atlas Moth on Java and the Death’s head hawkmoth in the Netherlands). All butterflies represent in one way or another rebirth, because of their magical transformation from caterpillar to butterfly, but especially butterflies that migrate are connected with these stories and believes.
The title ‘Little Nana’s Cape’ is inspired by a mythical story from the Aztec about their god Nanahuatzin.

On my blog De reis naar Batik more about my inspiration for this work in the post ‘Lepidopterist simply observe lepidopterans‘

Journey to Batik Projects Work on paper

Difficult Time

Post author By Sabine Bolk
Post date April 14, 2016

The work ‘Difficult Time’ was shown in the exhibition ‘The journey to Batik – Day & Night’ from 16 December 2018 until 20 January 2019 at De Nieuwe Veste in Breda (NL).

Overview of my exhibition ‘The journey to Batik – Day & Night’

Read more about this work also on my blog De reis naar Batik in the post ‘Difficult Time‘