I met Helen a couple of years ago inside an abandoned factory in Germany. After several festivals, we recently caught up in Aberdeen. She told me about the murals she painted for Nuart, and shared insights into the path that brought her there.
Category:
world
Once upon a time, or –actually- just one year ago, a crazy German guy wrote me an even crazier email. He identified himself as the curator of Urban Art Festival Amsterdam. He also stated that he was producing a mural in Amsterdam Southeast and wanted me to write about it. I was already planning to head to Northern Europe to attend the Belgian street art festival The Crystal Ship, and I had to fly to Nuart Aberdeen festival one week after that. So I figured it would have been at the very least convenient to spend the days in between in Amsterdam.
What could possibly go wrong?
I met Jon on a boat. We sailed the Stavanger Bay together during Nuart 2017. Our sail was dressed with an eye chart like the one used by optometrists. Artist Igor Ponosov meant for it to symbolize the distance between public art and its audience; a gap that Jon Reid is definitely working hard to close with his cultural blog “Dancing in the Dark – Creativity & Culture in Aberdeen and Beyond”
All I ever heard about this harbour city is that, after being bombed flat during WW2, Rotterdam was completely rebuilt by some visionary architects who made it the modern and out-of-the-way urban jungle that it is today.
Crossing its wide, busy roads feels like walking through a city; the water surfaces (which are usually so large I won’t call them ‘canals’) reflecting the skyscrapers blinking lights at night look like the open sky dotted with stars.
Since the moment I first stepped into Utrech from the back of the train station, I felt ‘something different’ hovering in the crisp winter air. It was something I haven’t ever experienced in Amsterdam, something tangible in the streets and – yet – seemingly impossible to pinpoint.