ON HIS NEWEST WORK. JR: Now, let s discuss your newest work.

Transcription

1

2 ON HIS NEWEST WORK CHAPTER 4 canyons & deserts JR: Now, let s discuss your newest work. PB: Ok, but first I would like to talk a little more about travel. I m traveling so much and it s such an ongoing learning curve, visiting different cultures. The way I live right now, I spend a lot of time in America but my studio is still in The Netherlands, going backwards and forwards. It s been really influencing my recent works, the last five years, that whole awareness of being in a different culture and therefore getting a different perspective on things. It s a different point of view. I find when I look at that in a broader perspective, when you travel to far-fetched places like the Antarctic or some of the deserts we have been to, the people that you meet share that same hunger or interest in different cultures and environments and different languages and all of that. But you also get very aware of the fact that they each have an individual perception of this shared experience, so if you re on a boat with 36 people, sailing over from Ushuaia, Southern Argentina, to the Antarctic, you notice that even though you get excited about the same things, the way you process it is still different. That concept, that idea, I find intriguing and it made me kind of go back in time, into myself, the way I lived my life and the way that influenced my artwork. For instance, I did a body of four pieces from the Inward Journey series that are about traveling. The first one has a horizontal slit, like you can travel and see a lot in a couple of days but it means your experience is very horizontal. You can go to 46 x 28 x 10 cm 18 x 43 x 14 cm ANTELOPE S TWIST CD SACRED PASSAGE CD x 11 x x 16.9 x

3 one small village and just stay there for a couple of weeks and just start to look into that village life. Then your experience can become very vertical because you mix and mingle with the locals and all that. There are people who will travel totally prepared, they read books and they have an itinerary and this is what they want to see and experience and it s very analytical. And that s what they enjoy, so I translated that as a square. I guess the last group is just open and like: I want to experience this and I don t want to have a preconceived idea, I just like to go because it sounds good. I ve done that many times. 45 x 40 x 10 cm THUNDER MOUNTAIN CD x 15.8 x 4 121

4 21 x 60 x 13 cm ANTELOPE DREAMING CD x 23.6 x 5.1 SYCAMORE CANYON CD x 32 x 10 cm 16.6 x 12.6 x 4 77 x 84 x 12 cm GRAND CANYON CD x 33.2 x 4.7

5 GRAND CANYON 47 x 33 x 9 cm TWIN PEAKS CD x 13 x

6 42 x 32 x 10 cm BRINS MESA CD x 12.6 x 4 TIME TRAVELER CD x 38 x 32 cm 27.6 x 15 x

7 If you look through a piece of glass that is polished, clear and transparent, you perceive the world deformed, transformed CUT AWAY CD x 27 x 10 cm 11.8 x 10.6 x 4 by that glass form.

8 HIGH LINE TRAIL CD x 55 x 11 cm 13 x 21.7 x x 59 x 20 cm WINDOW ROCK CD x 23.2 x 8 28 x 54 x 10 cm DEVIL S BRIDGE CD x 21.3 x 4 126

9 ARCHES NATIONAL PARK, UTAH 127

10 GLASS ROCKS! For a man coming from the Netherlands, literally translated meaning low or flat lands, spending time in the canyons and deserts of the infamous four corners is simply exhilarating! Hiking with Janet through the national parks of Utah, Arizona, Colorado and New Mexico, fills my heart with joy and never ceases to inspire me. From the Red Rocks of Sedona to the solemn vertical figures of the Valley of the Gods or the crevasses of Antelope Canyon, it is a humbling experience for any man or artist, to be surrounded by nature`s sculptures, created over hundreds of thousands of years by wind and water; reflecting light on hard and soft lines in glowing colors. How to translate this inspiration; to shape glass into canyons as an experience, not a truthful reproduction but a deeply felt personal expression of the relation between man and nature? Icebergs have an outer shape that allows looking from the outside in, transparency being inherent to frozen water. The glass Canyons only let the eye penetrate through the polished surface, where the thickness of the glass guides the eye along, revealing the structure of the outside form from within. 128

11 COLORADO CLIFFS CD x 63 x 10 cm 15.8 x 24.8 x 4 129

12 JR: You just open yourself up to whatever? PB: Years ago I saw an ad for Oman, never even heard of Oman, but KLM was doing a special rate flying from Amsterdam to Muscat. They just opened up that link, so I called my travel agent and said: tell me about Oman. And she said, well that is where Scheherazade`s Thousand and One Nights came from, it s not Persia, it s Oman. I said that s OK, that s enough. I went to Oman for two weeks and it was absolutely fabulous and fascinating to be in this Arab country that is old, very old, and very well maintained. There was so much to see. It was so exotic. When I came back, I made a group of work inspired by that specific place. SEDONA CD x 41 x 9 cm 20.1 x 16.1 x

13 31 x 47 x 10 cm 68 x 36 x 9 cm SYCAMORE SUNSET CD SEDONA SUNSET CD x 18.5 x x 14.2 x

14 BELL ROCK SEDONA, ARIZONA 132

15 WEEPING ROCK CD x 67 x 10 cm 21.7 x 26.4 x 4 133

16 57 x 40 x 10 cm ENCHANTMENT CD x 15.8 x 4 LOWER ANTELOPE CANYON 134

17 FAY CANYON SUNRISE CD x 38 x 14 cm 16.9 x 15 x

18 Coming around the bend, seeing a thousand RIM ROCK CD x 30 x 7 cm 13.4 x 11.8 x 2.8 shades of green, it just hit me! 61 x 23 x 12 cm COPPER CANYON WALL CD x 9.1 x

19 JR: Inspired by the colors, the architecture, the people or everything? PB: It s everything. It can even be animals, it can be a discussion you had with somebody that you met, food you ate. It s rarely just one thing, it s always a combination of things. The fact that I took a large sailing boat, a square-rigged three master, to travel to the Antartic influences how you travel, influences how you experience and what you re doing. Because you re not on one of these ships that take a day and a half to go across the Drake Passage and get you to Deception Island. It takes you five and a half, six days to get to Deception Island. You re in the middle of the ocean. JR: It s a buildup. PB: It s a buildup. 105 x 42 x 29 cm GLASS MOUNTAIN CD x 16.6 x

20 36 x 39 x 10 cm CATHEDRAL WASH CD x 15.4 x 4 SUNRISE OVER VALLEY OF THE GODS CD x 25 x 10 cm 20.9 x 9.9 x 4

21 JR: What do they say, it s the journey not the destination PB: Absolutely! JR: So the pieces about traveling are not necessarily about actual places but the whole idea of traveling, the process of traveling and how much you open yourself up to receive in these areas. PB: Yes, I did several pieces that were inspired by sailing specifically because that s another part of the experience, that sailing is actually as close as you get where you as a human are the intermediator between natures elements in its most vibrant, most strongest presence. It s the sea. You go through a storm, you know that you re miniscule; you could just die there on the spot. And then wind is just blowing through the sails and it s just that little ship that you re on. My favorite place would be to sit on the bowsprit that would be going up and down like a rollercoaster, but you re so, what s the word, engulfed in nature and the forces of nature. I really enjoyed it very much. It made me very aware that if you go in a car and drive, it s a very different thing. Or if, say you re on a cruise liner and you re on the ocean on a ship that is huge and has 3,000 people on it, it s not the same thing. They re very different experiences. 62 x 46 x 18 cm SHADOW MOUNTAIN CD x 18.1 x

22 JACK S CANYON, SEDONA, ARIZONA 140

23 JR: And how does that inspire you? PB: I ve been inspired by a lot of different things. I find that life itself is very inspiring and it doesn t matter whether it s nature or religion. I spent three weeks in a Buddhist temple in Thailand. They asked me to participate in a project making a stupa for a deceased enlightened monk. That was a life-changing experience. Everything you do is inspiration. When it becomes really big and important, is when you feel that on a deep soul level; that what you re experiencing outside of yourself totally resonates with that what you need inside yourself to be experienced at that time. It s like relationships. Like when you meet a person and there s that ultimate click that you can t even put into words, you can only say wow, that was really special. It can be somebody you meet in a plane or somebody you meet at a bar, at an opening reception. It can be anywhere it doesn t have to be something that you even continue. It could just be that moment in time where you open up to another human being, and a really deep experience can happen right there and then. I think that s wonderful, so inspirational. VISION QUEST CD x 41 x 16 cm 18.1 x 16.1 x

24 MARBLE WASH CD x 45 x 10 cm 20.1 x 17.7 x 4 142

25 28 x 44 x 10 cm MYSTIC PATH CD x 17.3 x 4 20 x 29 x 16 cm GENTLE WINDS CD x 13 x 10 cm 8 x 11.4 x 6.3 BEYOND CD x 5.1 x 4 143

26 33 x 46 x 13 cm AVALANCHE CD x 18.1 x 5.1 JR: It s such a part of who you are, making those moments. PB: I guess what it says about my work is that basically my work is very much driven by experience. I mean especially my Inward journey series. JR: I was going to say it is the experience, but then it s internalized. It s your reaction; you re responding to those experiences, but I guess something about that experience triggers within you. PB: Absolutely, I would absolutely agree with that, but at the same time I also notice that a lot of those experiences; they re not just mine, many people share the same kind of insight or next step in your personal evolution, your inward journey. Karl Jung would define them as, what is the name again, synchronicity. RAVEN S PEAK CD x 28 x 14 cm 14.6 x 11 x

27 You know they re archetypical; it actually connects you with your fellow human beings. I like to put that in my artwork because that s my form of communication. If I were a writer, it d be words; if I were a musician, I d make music; If I were a doctor, I d try to heal people, but for me it s my artwork that s my language. It s very personal and it s I mean a lot of contemporary work is extremely conceptual, very mental in a way and that s just not who I am. I m not an academic I m much more somebody who loves to experience and transform those experiences into my art. 55 x 70 x 15 cm HORSE SHOE BEND CD x 27.6 x

28 The feeling of absence of man, is very special. CANYON PARADISE CD x 43 x 10 cm 17.3 x 16.9 x 4 146

29 32 x 20 x 20 cm DESERT VISION CD x 8 x 8 RABBIT EARS CD x 49 x 22 cm 46.9 x 19.3 x 8.7

30 VALLEY OF THE GODS, UTAH 148

31 JR: You come at it emotionally. PB: Emotionally, yeah. I love to make things of beauty, which also is a big no-no to some extent in contemporary art and is why I consider myself to be old-fashioned as an artist. JR: No, I m the same way and they act like beauty is some simplistic thing and it s not at all, it s a very complex term and you re making beautiful objects, which I think is a very difficult thing, to actually make something that is aesthetically beautiful and coming out of feelings of beauty too, it s not like you can just create something beautiful PB: It s not that straight forward, it s a ripening artistically, it s awareness. To me beauty comes from the soul and touches the soul and when I listen to CNN, or read the newspapers, I m confronted with a lot of ugliness, manmade ugliness and I guess I feel called to do something to oppose that. So I like to make things of beauty just to maybe add a bit of beauty to the manmade ugliness. FULL MOON 53 x 25 x 10 cm OVER VALLEY OF THE GODS CD x 9.9 x 4

32 JR: Right, definitely, definitely, there can never be enough. And what we re given is so beautiful, I mean look at this, you think how did we mess this up, it s all here. Someone sent me a photo of a sand dollar last night and it has this beautiful floral design on it, and I m like, how? How is that possible? PB: We just picked one up on the beach in Panama JR: And there is no reason for it to be beautiful but it is PB: I know it s so perfect. Nature has shown us over and over again, you know, how things can be. It can be ruthless too, nature is ruthless, but there s always a bigger picture there is a reason for everything. There s, I guess there s a reason for us too. You know, I m just not sure we always get it. I m sure I don t always get it. That s part of the inward journey, I believe. 147 x 30 x 19 cm REFLECTIONS CD x 11.8 x 7.5

33 It s about finding yourself reflected in your environment. INDIAN GARDENS GRAND CANYON 151

34 JR: Yeah, understanding that and finding that out. It s funny that you travel elsewhere to find what s here. What s internally that s when those things are revealed, I think, when you re pulled out of your natural environment. PB: It s the mirroring effect. Wherever we are, this is something that is coming into my newest work, is the awareness that we re all mirrors for each other and we learn from being in contact. And yes, I ve also had times in my life where I was very much living in one place, reading a lot, studying a lot, being very much inward. I guess I need both. I need my alone time to be quiet, and then there are times when you want to be in that situation where people are just mirroring you. You respond to each other, you respond to your environment. It changes you. It s subtle but it s happening. Art is a mirror! SEE THROUGH CD x 37 x 10 cm 8 x 14.6 x 4 32 x 59 x 8 cm DRAGON S BREATH CD x 23.2 x

35 DANCING SPIRIT CD x 48 x 10 cm 26.4 x 18.9 x 4

36 ECHO CANYON CD x 45 x 13 cm 24 x 17.7 x

37 50 x 38 x 11 cm ANGENI CD x 15 x 4.3 ON THE TRANSFORMATION SERIES SACRED LIGHT CD x 38 x 10 cm 16.9 x 15 x 4 JR: Tell me about the next series of work, the new body of work. Is there a title for it? PB: There is the Transformation series. They kind of encompass, kind of hold everything we talked about, because we are continuously in transformation. You know, we re in this bleep in time, but even that bleep in time is essential because it s part of evolution and it s our own personal evolution but it s also our evolution as a species, evolution of earth and when we are alive and on this earth, how we spend our time and what we do with this time and how productive we are, how not productive. Transformation is ongoing, you can t stop it. You know, if you put somebody in jail, I m sure he s still transforming again and again and again. He s being confronted with a different situation, and just being confronted with something 18 x 25 x 13 cm INNER REFLECTIONS CD x 9.9 x

38 27 x 64 x 12 cm OWACHOMO CD x 25.2 x 4.7 different will change you, transform you. I see it as basically a positive thing, even though in the moment it may look as negative. When you encounter problems, you re not happy to have the problem but, when time evolves and you look back at it, you say: that was a real important time in my life where I really changed, where I transformed, where I became richer and riper and more mature. That process of transformation I am translating into form. Sometimes it will be a kind of a rhythmic change, where you can actually see a certain shape rhythmically moving forward, and other times it can be quite a traumatic change, where it is going from one shape to the next, within one piece. I find that exciting. There s a piece in production right now that is the biggest piece so far, it s about 400 kilos, 900 lbs, of casting weight and this piece is completely transparent from optical glass with a hint of blue in it but you can look inside. When you look inside that piece, you can see these transformations and you can see them from different angles, which you can only do with glass, you can t do it with any different material. That is so exciting, that you can show transformation not just as WIND S LAMENT CD x 30 x 11 cm 18.9 x 11.8 x

39 56 x 30 x 10 cm 58 x 32 x 14 cm SHAPE SHIFTER CD QUARTER MOOW CD x 11.8 x x 12.6 x

40 a change in outer form, but a change in inner form as well. Glass allows you to do that. That is probably why I love to work in glass! JR: Because you get that, you get the inside. PB: You can go deep when you go inside. JR: It has volume. PB: It has volume, it s JR: It s not just a surface, whereas I think a sculpture or a painting it s surface but you are able to create that depth. Do you think of that when you re working, ok, what can I see through it and from each angle or? PB: Yes! 50 x 27 x 8 cm ARROWHEAD CD x 10.6 x

41 You re just a particle of that ongoing evolution. 38 x 29 x 9 cm BROKEN ARROW CD x 11.4 x x 13 x 89 cm 8,7 x 14.4 x x 48 x 9 cm TAOS CD x 18.9 x

42