Biography
For me I never started teaching only for the money, but to work together with young kids in small and big artprojects. I see my work as a teacher and an artist as symbiotic.
On of the first big Art(cultural) projects I initiated a so- called GALLERYTUNNEL, a bicyclist-and pedastrian tunnel being transformed into a gallery-like environment. A visual speakerscorner for schoolgoing youth.Pincel versus pistol being another slogan, a project which uses art as a pincellike sword against small criminality. For this I have received the Hein Roethofprice in 1996, in Canada the project was marked as one of the 100 best projects in the world , in America it has been awarded. In a way I have digitalised my projects and have been using video as a medium to create small short movies with schoolgoing kids.
I always have been attracted to modern means as Photography(which you can hardly call modern anymore) and video. I use Photoshop and animation in my work. I have done this even before entering the digital zone, but then using analogue photography, scissors, paper and glue. Now I love to use PHOTOSHOP.
The works I am creating now have a lot to do with my position as an artist and a teacher.Creating a new anti-superhero image as a swallowboyt, a kid who has a collission with a sparrow during a vacation on a terrace in Northern Italy. As a result the boy inherits characteristics of the swallow, being the flowlike life some of them lead, rarely touching the ground during their inspired life.
The swallowboy travells through realities and paintings being made in history, creating new fields of meaning for him. Giving new meaning, being inspired.
This must result in a book focussing on education, a 180 degree different approach of writing a stigmatising method which instructs young people how, when and what to do, in the name of art(education)
With my approach, being a novelle-like one, combined with images, I want to show flow, ispiration, creativity and giving new meanings in a story they can read and giving the opportunity to go in a swallowlike flow and discover their own images and meanings.
