Conversations

drawings reproduced on transparent film by Sonja van Kerkhoff/Sen McGlinn, 2005

artwork, copyrighted by Sonja van Kerkhoff
Detail in the Vredenburg Passage way in the Music Hall (adjacent to the Utrecht Railway Station) as part of
the Turks Express Utrecht cultural festival, 2006.

artwork, copyrighted by Sonja van Kerkhoff
Detail of my drawings underneath a poem in the Plaatboef music shop, Leiden, 2005.

artwork, copyrighted by Sonja van Kerkhoff

artwork, copyrighted by Sonja van Kerkhoff
Detail: in Galerie TamTam, 19 shop windows, Leiden North as part of the TamTam Festival, The Netherlands. Here: detail of 3 lines of drawings of film on glass and mirror in the window of Moroccan-owned hairstylist shop in the Beatrixstraat, 2008


The Poetry on the Wall Foundation (www.muurgedichten.nl) coordinated the illustrations of 101 poems onto walls around the city of Leiden between 1992 and 2005.
To finish the project they organized the Dicht op de Muur (Close to the Wall) festival where about 80 artists of Leiden exhibited an artwork in response to a chosen poem in a shop.
My poem was: Charlie Parker by the Harlem Renaissance poet, William Waring Cuney (1906 - 1976), at Langegracht 72, and my shop was the second-hand music shop, De Plaatboef, in the city centre (Nieuwe Rijn 42).

artwork, copyrighted by Sonja van Kerkhoff

My response to this poem was to write out the poem in one long line, and to place drawings underneath this. And I added another poem along the opposite mirrored wall, which you can see reflected in the mirror above.

artwork, copyrighted by Sonja van Kerkhoff
Dizzy by an Australian-Papua New Guinean friend June Perkins.
So on entering people could walk along the left, reading the Charlie Parker poem and on leaving they could read the Dizzy poem along the right wall.

artwork, copyrighted by Sonja van Kerkhoff
As you move the drawings, the transparent (mirrored) lines become more or less visible, creating a feeling of movement. The varied spacing of the images was intended to create a sense of rhyme and rhythm akin to music.

artwork, copyrighted by Sonja van Kerkhoff
The drawings on transparent film on the mirrored walls, became more or less visible as you walked past. The images and broken images were intended to create their own voices or 'musics' in reaction to the words, sounds and rhythms in the poem, to jam along like one long score of music.

artwork, copyrighted by Sonja van Kerkhoff


Below: A bit of the Charlie Parker poem with the same drawings in a short animation.


Click on 'refresh' or F5 to see the animation again.



artwork, copyrighted by Sonja van Kerkhoff

artwork, copyrighted by Sonja van Kerkhoff

artwork, copyrighted by Sonja van Kerkhoff

artwork, copyrighted by Sonja van Kerkhoff   

To come ... oneday..., an animation of some of the drawings with an excerpt from the Dizzy poem by June Perkins.

>> To a page on the "muurgedichten" website about this etalage (windows) project


<< Exhibition in 2006
in the Vredenburg Passage way
in the Music Hall adjacement to the Utrecht Railway Station as part of the Turks Express Utrecht cultural festival.

artwork, copyrighted by Sonja van Kerkhoff

artwork, copyrighted by Sonja van Kerkhoff
Detail, May 2008, as part of Galerie TamTam,
in a Moroccan Barber shop, Leiden.

Shown

2008    Threads of the Day   Leids Wevershuis, Leiden Museum of Weaving, Leiden, The Netherlands.

2008Galerie TamTam, 19 shop windows, Leiden North as part of the TamTam Festival, The Netherlands

2006Turks Express Cultural Festival, Muziekcentrum (Music Centre next to the concert hall), Vredenburg, Utrecht, The Netherlands

2005Dicht op de Muur (Close to the Wall) festival, Leiden, The Netherlands

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