sketch experiments

i mentioned that i took some laminated drypoint paper with me to iceland, didn't i?
having started to put into practice my 'spending time at the print studio plan', i've begun to finalise and edition some of the plates that have accumulated but needed a printing press.

so, here are, invariably titled greetings from grimsey; otto helms, grimsey; or: opa uelzen war auch auf grimsey. titling through memorised tool: i took the swiss army knife my dad had rescued and cleaned from one of my, by then rather confused, granddads 'de-cluttering' sessions (aka: throw everything you have in the nearest nettle bushes). while the knife doesn't go everywhere, it made it to iceland and was a rather able tool of choice for some drypoint experiments. and while it's unlikely that he ever would have come along to iceland (travelling was  definitely more  his wife's thing), i very much enjoyed the thoughts the improvised tool provided for the journey and after.

four 'postcards' from the island, inked up as intaglio and printed on one sheet. each card is about 7x10cm.

and in the background

... there is still more: another view, the same sound

yet, the eyes don't blink, don't move, don't change focus. it's rather simple: her video editing skills are not up to such complexities - yet.

colour scheme i

all the while, i hear this in the background

the capture of spectularity

three days spent on grimsey afforded not only the crossing of the artic circle and a futile hunt of some puffins that didn't leave but also an exchange of the various books one transports in a backpack on iceland. we shared the little hostel with a german woman who packs even more excessively than i do: but her five books in iceland provided some good insights into hiking routes and various other bits.


the book that really got me was one with a chapter titled 'nature equals kitsch plus x', by wolfgang mueller. what a marvellous equation. it provided and still does provide plenty to mentally chew over. again and again when you just stare around you and there is just no way of doing anything else other than staring.

m, the woman with the five travel books sat downstairs in the kitchen and each morning declared: 'wow - i can't get over this change in the photo wallpaper over there' - pointing to the icelandic mainland in some 50 kms distance in ever changing light, cloud and snow formations. 'how come they put a new one up every couple of hours?'

the evening before we walked to the northern tip and while i happily snapped away with the camera, every click was futile. it froze in time and single viewpoint all that what could not be frozen.

it seemed ridiculous to try and capture in image something that once capture would be pure kitsch. photography and painting/drawing as completely futile. and then i read about above's equation. the equation, so mueller, renders visual arts in iceland virtually impossible, and land art doesn't even need a consideration to start with.

what a fabulous starting point of my little landart, nature, landscapism module: failure. utter failure to deal with where you're at and what you see. there are possibly some caveats to this:
- what is there to turn to if visual representation is utterly meaningless?
- the romantics tried to romanticise -- make abstract and thus more beautiful -- the landscape. what if it cannot be made any more beautiful?
- sightseeing spectacularity makes you numb and blind; but, relatedly: how do you ordinarily live with such spectacularity?

thus, while taking futile photos, trying to sketch some of the many horses, catalogueing the various colour changes in boiling mudpots, ignoring the clouds above as any sketch would be only considered not real enough and contemplating the folds that thick lave flow makes, i am working my way through the above.

maybe next: some colour schemes, of mudpots and arctic forests (i.e. blueberries, cranberries and crow berries) in autumn beauty. but first a bit more failure. fresh from grimsey:

it smells

unmistakenly in front of us, the municipal rubbish dump. we are walking towards west into the valley and the wind is just heading our way. raven and the usual mix of various gulls circle not above a fishing boat but the waste. right to the side is a smaller heap for green cuttings. they have so many trees here that they even cut them.

of course iceland smells. in 5 degrees c it doesn't approach anywhere near a good whiff of central berlin in high summer, but rubbish stinks here too.

we knew there as an 'unimpressing stretch of 1-2 hrs of road if you don't have a car to get straight to the car park'. so... if you don't travel by car you need to deal with the smell.

earlier in the morning i outlined the 5-10 options for the last stop before returning to reykjavik. and, while outlining realised that i'm not that far away from my friend who hates decisioning as there is invariably a worse option than the one she may chose. not long ago i declared: nope, don't have that problem. but: here i most definitely do. the choice (omitting various suboptions):

- a highly attractive eastfjord village with norwegian buildings; or:
- a functional service centre with a lack of cheap accommodation.

the decisionmaker: public transport, and due to the lack of it: too little time.

so, as we clambered up sulur, west of akureyri and its rubbish dump, the dilemma, once seen with a bit more colour scheme and view to the sea towards the arctic unmasked itself as yet another one of the:

how many sights can you cram into one week or a weekend even, with its appropriate sections in any english speaking travel guide. can it be shorter? more exciting? riveting even? another vulcano, another glacier, more hot springs, more exciting lava formations?

we decided rather clearly: this is a pseudo-dilemma. no point in chasing highlights. a walk is a walk and the light changes make any functional service town in grass, heather, moss settings rather spectacular.

more on the latter, next... if i get access to inet and computer again...