Portret of Wapke
Wapke is an artist based in Rotterdam. She grew up on a cattle farm near the village Wjelsryp. This is in Friesland in the North of the Netherlands. Wapke is a founding member of myvillages.org
More info: www.wapke.nl
Village Produce Films and small shop in the Veterinary-Clinic-Nylân
27 March 2009

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Produce from Hoefen, Wjelsryp and Lawson Park.

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Woman waiting with her cat for vetenarity treatment.

All eight Village Produce Films run in a loop and visitors to the clinic can look in the vitrine to see some produce. The clinic is in Leeuwarden and is run by my sister Maaike - a vetenarian - that also runs the horsemilk-farm Friesland.

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Postcards
07 May 2008

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Fryske Gea

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The border to the next landowner (Wjelsryp - Westerein 11).

The ground school of Wjelsryp does a project with postcards sent from places abroad where villagers live or have lively links to. Siebe Haven (the teacher of group 7 and 8) asked me to use my links. I asked Kathrin to ask her mother to sent a card from the area around Bamberg and hope to get a Chinese postcard by the Grizedale crew. Guestroom will work this out, see www.happystacking.tv. Just sent them a picture of a typical landscape of the Fryske Gea (Friesland).

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culture soil drillings at the farm
15 January 2008

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the driling we did May 2007

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After doing the first test drillings in Grizedales Lawson Park in April 2007, I worked with my father on the land of the farm in Wjelsryp. We did a few drillings in the first week of May 2007. One drilling a day and he told me stories on how the land and the soil (clay) were used over the last century.
I worked out our first landscape perceptions and ordered some pictures and we planned to pick up the drillings in the autumn and work all out in 2008. That summer he worked with my sister Pietsie on the village and farm archives and I did my trips to The Best Place. The shock was big when my father that august 22nd died in a car crash.
After a pause I try to work out a plan on landscape perception with other farmers in that area (from summer 2008) and will value that my inspiration to get involved in land use and perception is a heritage of my father. Dealing with the land and the soil was his live, he was a farmer.

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Showing the Bibliobox in the village hall of Wjelsryp
05 June 2007

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On the evening of Thursday 5 June I gave a talk in the Yn’e Mande village hall describing the contents and the travels of the Bibliobox. To introduce a new project in the village and do the research project I asked all villagers by sending them a letter if they knew anyone who had photos or home movies of one-off or recurrent festivities in the village. That evening tips were passed on and some people had brought along snapshots and films which were shared.

We agreed that it is important to show that rural villages have a rich culture with its own characteristic dynamism and history. Ten villagers came along to the gathering at the village hall, which Maaike Feenstra and Lysbeth van Dam helped to organise.

On 7 June my mother Lieske Feenstra-de Groot and I gave painting lessons to the five-year-olds at the local school to accentuate the theme of the presentation: Landscape! That friday the film ‘Dinner with Cows’ was screened by Siebe Haven during the parents evening. This unusual meal, created by Kultivator Art Group, proved a source of inspiration for some cattle farmers in Wjelsryp. To be continued.

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Grizedale arts is a farm
12 May 2007

In 2007 I did a short Grizedale residency with Kathrin while they were planning LAWSON PARK - a farmhouse on a mountain.
The office, the residency and the work soon will be located at that place. The farm needs attention, especially the garden. For all involved in working and living there, there is an obligation to connect to the ground. Every morning the staff works on the land. Every residency artist works on the land and has to deal with this land and the soil and the plants live on that soil. Or deal with the dears that eat the fresh salad that wasn’t meant for them. This place has ADSL and belongs socially to the village Coniston. But that is a long walk and the Lake District is a lot of driving. “Welcome to the Lake district” Lisa said when Kathrin was setup by all the driving. You drive there and come because the place is known by the artists that come and go and tell about it, the staff is known and welcomed at a lot of art-dinner-parties (also in London). Myvillages knew about them before we ever saw the Lake District. But the object itself has an own dynamic, lets look at the FARM AS AN OBJECT this land does something with you, it brings you down to … yes to what? What does the soil do? Karen can talk about soil with English words I've never heard before, but she uses gloves when she works in the garden.

THE FARM steps into the tradition of art and here specific into a sculpture tradition that is spatial made possible by the FORESTRY COMMISSION. Adam is since 1999 director of Grizedale Arts, he stepped into a tradition of sculpture – was and is Grizedale Arts moving away from that tradition and is the farm the last step? It went from sculptures in the woods – sculptures made by wood, or inspired by the woods - to a more social engaged practise and a lot of performing artists in (non)locations somewhere in the area, to a farm.
Interesting is that the last physical sculptures in Grizedale / added since 1999 / are mainly based on house structures see e.g. FAT, Paul Dodgson and Jo Coupe. So if I was an art historian looking for an oeuvre in the woody head of Grizedales Arts than I could say: `to go from that last sculptures based on house-forms towards a farm is spatial big but historically a logical step.` But I am not writing lines, nor interested in oeuvres, nor interested in the “being different” of a place like Grizedale. Being different is a strange goal connected to art, I hope we can get rid of that habit. In art I like to fit to locations, to the ground, to add and to move on. In the move there can be a critic but this is constructive I hope, and opens spaces not labels them. If a location is too far out I have to go home. The farm feels close to art and to farming, but it is a strange thing. Just want to look what it is and what it does in a very basic form and from there see what you can add to it. Want to add what is following the line but triggers imaginations and makes space for others. Can Myvillages add things in the way it works already or wants to work…

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Entries 11-15 / 18
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Entries 11-15 / 18
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