Well here I am in Berlin, in fact I have been here one week already. When I arrived last Tuesday it was really sunny and spring, but the weather disintegrated over the weekend and it is cold and wet now. Not the best weather for running round trying to find the materials I need. I had a very bleak bike ride to Friedrichshain today on a wild goose chase for muslin. In the end I was able to buy it around the corner from where I am staying.
When I was writing this blog in 2012 when I was in the Guest Studio at the Milchhof I am sure that most of what I wrote was about ideas and the exciting things that I was seeing. My experience at the moment is quite different and a bit frustrating. Any of you reading this who have tried to make work in another country, grappling with another language, will understand how I am feeling. It seems I have gone from being a fully functioning Sculptor in London to a sort of helpless creature who is much more dependent on others, here in Berlin I am “like a Baby” (these are the words of the person who’s studio I am sharing, he should know, he said he was “like a baby” when he arrived here from Bogota). Everyone is being really supportive and helpful, but it is hard when things that you would normally sort out just like that take days.
Yesterday I spent about half an hour walking around the equivalent of Homebase trying to pluck up the courage to go to the counter and try to order my wood. I had gone to the store in the end because trying to do this from the catalogue was just too stressful. At least if I could handle the wood and see it in front of me I would be confident I was getting the right thing, rather than relying on some internet translation service, which really couldn’t cope with “timber buying talk” anyway.
Well, it is all being delivered tomorrow, and then another set of problems arrise from not being in my own studio with all my own tools. Several times in the last few days I have thought, what the hell am I putting myself through this for.
Several times in the last few days I have also been really excited about what I am doing here.
There might be a small amendment to the text from last time, somewhere between deciding on the title of the show and writing the press release I managed to corrupt the German spelling of The Mirror Hall, in two different ways. But the official invite has all the correct spellings on it.
