New Year

will it be a peaceful, happy, healthy, glittering and content new year 2009 for all of you!

iceskating

yesterday we went ice-skating, despite horrible background music it was good to have a winter experience. we repeated it in the evening with woolen socks around the living room and the kitchen. this time our techniques were much better and the music as well: "the welcome wagon"
i always wanted to be trained in figure skating but my mother did'nt liked the competitive atmosphere and handknitted the woolen leggings that were required for the training instead of buying the elegant thinner ones. I am still pretty good with iceskating and wish i had kept that handknitted trousers...

the days between the years

christmas we spent with many family members and a friend and his daughter who's poor wife fell off a horse two days before and unfortunately had to stay in the hospital for some days
we had some bad violine playing by different members of my family including me
many delicious dinners and cookies made by my mother
handmade wrappings by lou
decorated windows
and i got perfect glasses, real treasures
and the usual joy and ennui with the family

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and now we are back to normal, i like this days between the years, still that solemn mood but mixed with some everyday life.

before christmas

this week is committed to theater, rehearsals and concepts for the play i am currently working on, the first and intense meeting for the big one i am going to start in january, really excited to work at a state theater for the first time and today a small performance at Lou's school. she was supposed to play the winter tree and complaining since days about the super ugly hat the teacher made for her. in the end they decided on the scarf and now i think she was right.
more beautiful headpieces, snowflakes they all made themself.

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a picture by Louise Lawler that satisfies all my longing for esthetics since a couple of weeks. i could look at it over and over again.

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and some music i really like to listen to this times;
had that above vision recently, being completely convinced that the candles on the advent wreath were still glowing, driving back home 10 minutes just to check while being mocked by my daughter.

outside

today



inside, cousins, yesterday

things in progress

the afternoons after school are too short to finish this cutouts in one day, most of the windows still need color, lou used a scalpel herself for the first time.

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still testing every step for her christmas present, the fabric wallhanging inspired by this. hope i will finish it in time.

the rehearsals for the next job, a theaterplay, started today. that's always the time when i get things done the best.
but i am a little bit worried about working again, i enjoyed "real life" so much.
but today it was relaxed and surprising, an incredible old african musician playing with the actors, what a natural selfconciousness and lack of any angst.
sometimes my work catapults me into worlds i never even thought about.

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and something finished by lou, recently invented, illustrated stories, it says:
art and dots and she says she can't draw but she can draw!

some relocations

finally settled again in our apartment, all of us thankful being back, some clearing, cleaning, moving around, still plans to change but everyday live took over again.

we had to clear our (illegal) roofterrace, the new houseowners have no sympathy, so the plants moved to the little balconies. i was lucky, i got the little olive tree from turkey in front of my working room. we discovered a marigold, blossoming in the middle of december.



unable to decide, lou in playmoheaven at the fleemarket today
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another breathtaking Lisandro Alonso film "Liverpool", this time at the cinema and in opponent climate circumstances, i am still very impressed about his work

Inbetween Apartments

yesterday we moved out for 4 days. we leased out our apartement for a filmcrew. it felt right this time because we wanted to renovate it anyway and i knew the artdepartment people. they changed it completely until today and it is so good. to see it without all our things, it creates inspiriation how to change everything, get rid of a lot of stuff and make and customize things.
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today i started to sew a christmas present for lou, a fabric hanging like above for the wall at her bed with horses and i could have posted that whole book, rediscovered while searching for inspiration. this is perfection to me, how the farmers decorated their houses with fabrics, colors and simple things. hope we will find a suitable way for our rooms.

Ulm

my parents wonderful party was held in the refectory of the former HfG, a design school from 1953 to 1968. Max Bill, the first rector saw the HfG as a continuation of the Bauhaus, so everything we did for the celebration was influenced with that design tradition that is still dominating my families esthetics. My sister J. made Ottl Aicher like posters and postcards, customized to my parents history and I just added a lot of lilac for the costumes, my mothers favorite color ever since and we made a very dada performance as stewardesses with cardboard props, encouraged and directed by our childhoodfriend and extrasister C. Without her, the three of us (sisters) would never have found the way on stage, being completely made for behind the stage activities but our parents really deserved it and we made them happy and proud, at least they pretended to be.
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Embroidery

back from a 4 day visit to Ulm, the town where i grew up. preparing, supporting and celebrating the big party on the occasion of my parents 70ies birthday. it feels like i have been away for more then a week, met so many members, friends and companions of my family, very turbulent days and the biggest parts of them quite joyful.

in a rare moment on my own, doing some errands in the pedestrian zone i met this turkish men. sitting there, very calm in the middle of a busy road, making this embroideries that are describing his state and needs in a very discrete and beautiful way.
being handicapped and not able to work but in the need to earn some money for his family, asking for donations, either materials or money and offering commissioned embroidery.
he was very friendly, open and not bitter. i really would like to make something with him, unfortunately i did not manage to meet him again and have been too surprised when i talked to him first. I will ask my mother to do it for me, she knew him already.

much more to report but i have to fill the advent calendar for lou, she so wants to believe that it is not me doing it.

have a wonderful week!

Stars

thats what we see through the windows of our apartment at the moment
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found a nearly forgotten big big box with old polaroids this evening, another prove that time goes by so quickly but I liked what i saw and the medium suits that times very well ...i will post some soon

Encounters & Snow

So many encounters last week.
Usually I work until late and nobody expects me to socialize, but I decided to have a break for the rest of this year and my social life starts changing. I really like it but I have to get used to it too.
there have been some dinners with friends at our home, like with my friend G., i haven't seen her for about 7 years despite living in the same city, an invitation to a big one yesterday night, only women, numerous afternoons with lou's girls and one with a dear friend of mine, rehearsals with a childhoodfriend and my sister for the parents event, a rainy but wonderful day with Ola, another turbulent afternoon with her and the children, trying to make advent wreaths at the steiner school bazaar and inbetween a horrible and memorable encounter with an old but not so close friend, obviously homeless (but denying it) and somehow mentally ill.
all of it an social overdose. happiness and being irritated at once.
the last nights snow (unfortunately melted already) and rereading anna karenina, given to me by L. is a good antipode.

The Gang

they read everything, they play and cuddle like kittens, they invent stories in the bus, they sing and dance on the street, they are jealous, very different, they set up a bakery in our flat with a sign at the entrancedoor and i had the best day with all of them.
and my camera drives me crazy, overexposure in the automatic modus, i knew how to deal with it at the beginning, have to reread the mannual.

My Daughter

used to wear exclusively dresses and skirts and i always enjoyed to collect and make them for her. even in the coldest winter she refused to wear a trouser. we always had two pairs of wonderful big woolen leggings to keep her warm.

recently she decided to wear only trousers, enjoys soccer and is very proud to be the only girl in a new kungfu group of eight (older) boys.
this weekend, starting from friday morning, she spent at the countryside at a schoolfriend's house. yesterday i called her friend's mother to find out how she feels after i haven't heard anything for 24 hours, she just told me that she was fine and if she was aloud to pass the telephone back.

now she is back home and i have to learn again that our love doesn't become smaller in any way with her developing independence. We spent the loveliest evening together, feeling as close as we always did.
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tomorrow there is no school and i will spend the day with at least three 6 year old girls in jeans.

My sister

and me, early 80ies and just her today.
We had a lot of fun making objects out of cardboard for a little performance that we are planning to show at our parents 70ies birthdayparty, later this month.

lanterns

at the saint martins day yesterday, late afternoon with the kids and tonight at the opening of our friends exhibition. a street lantern in an aquarium in a snowstorm. Johannes i like your work!

Los Muertes

directed by Lisandro Alonso, 2004. a young and highly talented argentinian, interview here.
the film is breathtaking, beautiful, straight and raw. jungle, death, jail, a men's journey through a high producing nature back to the jungle where it all began, searching for his unknown daughter. the pictures tell much more.
I want to see everything he did.
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more interesting projects from argentina here and here