A-N magazine, did an article on my Berlin residency on this Projects unedited website. A lot of people read these blogs, and have got in touch with me. Mostly people from the UK about to visit Berlin, or interested in Berlin, or already living in Berlin, but others too, like artists asking me to join their projects, which is great. One artist living in Berlin now has got in touch and today I met her for a coffee. Tall, forthright, loose shoulder-length brown hair, large almond shaped blue eyes she seems clear about her aims to be an artist. Having done an exchange term in Berlin and enjoyed it, on graduating from Chelsea School of Art she had found that she had to spend her time doing a lot of jobs just to pay for her rent, not being able to have a studio nor to spend much time doing her own work. After three years of this, the opportunity came up to come to Berlin so she took it. Rents are much lower here making it a lot easier for artists. What she hadn't realized is how long it would take her to settle in. Not speaking any German, after nine months of being in Berlin she is gradually picking it up. She has finally found a place to live that she really likes, is doing a curatorship of a new small gallery in exchange for a ‘free' studio on the premises, and is picking up from play school a four year old child and taking care of her until the mother comes home at seven pm. This earns her sufficient money to allow her to live and to paint. After a time she will find a separate studio as she finds the situation however convenient still confining on her freedom. A bold confident mover, she gives the impression of being capable and adaptable.
In the evening there was an opening of the third exhibition to be at her gallery, so I arranged to meet Tom there. Green helium filled balloons covered the ceiling and the walls of this tiny brightly lit gallery were covered with photographs of the beautiful forests of an archipelago of islands between Fiji and Australia, called Vanualu. It looked rather like the Bush in New Zealand. In fact the Designer half of the Designer-Photographer duo is a New Zealander. Between the green balloons and the tiny baby on her shoulder we had a natter about living in Berlin. The German Photographer and tiny baby meant I didn't have to ask her about why she stayed on here after a residency.
Tom and I went on to have dinner at the Vietnamese restaurant Saigon at Rosa Luxemburg Platz, which was so fulsome that I took home what I couldn't eat there in a package. Lunch for me tomorrow.
