Thursday, August 30, 2007

Report and Photos from Weimar Summer Courses

I am back from a SUPERB visit to Germany and the Weimar Summer Courses. These 45 slides show course activities, my instructors and the leader of the program, Burkhardt Kolbmüller, scenes from in and around Weimar, such as Goethe's town and garden houses, Schiller Strasse; a 1923 home and buildings from the Bauhaus in Weimar, an original Rodin sculpture (shown here) that lives in the lobby of the current Bauhaus University, the reconstructed office of Walter Gropius, and his studio, from which you can see the Buchenwald Memorial bell tower in the distance; some of the Bauhaus in nearby Dessau, such as master houses where Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky lived; a lovely dormatory structure where I stayed during the course, an admittedly unimaginative depiction of my visit to the famous art festival, documenta 12, and more.

I thank friends Steven Dahlberg, Isabella Pitisci, Sebastian Schröder-Esch, Burkhardt and others for providing many of these photos.

I have also posted 15 photos I took at the Buchenwald Memorial just outside of Weimar. This concentration camp was the largest in the German Reich by the end of World War II, imprisoning more than 250,000 people over eight years, 55,000 of whom died there.

As for the course itself, I could write for days about what I learned and experienced. Let me distill just one essential discovery for now. In time, more sharing will surely seep into this blog.

Over the course of these weeks in Weimar, I learned that Beauty of Water has a home, a cannon, significant precedent, and previously unknown mentors. The actual teachings offered through our stellar instructors, Hildegard Kurt and Shelley Sacks, were not, for the most part, new concepts to me, although they were fascinating and freshly framed. What kept me giddy with excitement was the fact that a well defined context exists, within which Beauty of Water fits effortlessly. It is as though Beauty of Water were part of a great jigsaw puzzle, and other pieces of the puzzle were unearthed before my eyes.

Wednesday, August 08, 2007

From Bauhaus to Social Sculpture - Workshop in Germany

I am delighted to share that I received a full scholarship for a workshop that is supported by the European Union, called From Bauhaus to Social Sculpture. The Shaping of a Humane Society as an Aesthetic Challenge taking place in Weimar, Germany from August 11-25. The instructors are Dr. Hildegard Kurt of und.Institut and Shelly Sacks of the Social Sculpture Research Unit at Oxford Brookes University. This course is utterly on topic for Beauty of Water. Many thanks to those who have helped make it possible for me to attend. Happy August, all!