Stockholm

I am starting to feel that I use the expression time goes fast way to much. But unfortunately it is so.
Only a couple off weeks ago my teacher told me about the Supermarket art fair in Stockholm, and it didn't take long for me to make up my mind and book a ticket. It was an amazing trip and I went to see lots off different museums and public art sites (they have a lot off subway stations with public art). The market itself wasn't as big as I expected and didn't take that long to go through (which gave more time for other museums). I do have to say that being there gave me a lot off confidence about what I am doing myself. The market consists of small galleries mostly run by the artist themselfs and thus not too commercial. I could have definitely seen some of my own work competing over there.

The city itself is a beautifull old town stretched out over multiple smaller islands. Unfortunately I didn't see any classic cars at all. But with -19 degrees celcius temperature and snow on the roads everywhere that is quite understandable. I guess I have to find a classic Saab or Volvo somewhere else.

This week I am going to try out some new collages with some of the extra prints I made. We have new tutors for this semester and I am in a different group as well. Luckily my studio has increased in space so I really feel like producing and trying to fill up the walls.

C02 Projectspace

This semester we are all supposed to set up a small show in the project space C02 at ECA. Since I have been working on my prints alot and trying to get as much feedback as possible I thought it would be a smart idea to sign up for a rather sooner than later date. It was going to look like I had the space all to myself but luckily one of my classmates decided to join me (Gregor Morrison). Since he is doing a lot  of prints aswell we thought it might be a good combination.
The crit went really wel and I have to say even though it was a bit tough at the beginning (you're not alowed to say anything for the first 30 minutes), just taking notes for a while really makes you think aout what the people are saying. And hey I did this to get feedback right? So in the end I didn't really feel like I had to defend myself or anything I was just pleased with all the feedback I got. Ok some of it more than other but it is good to hear what comes to mind when other people look at your work, and then I don't mean the I like the colours you used kind of comments I was used to get. Yes doing a masters degree is deffinitely different and in my oppinion for the better.

Money prints

A new month so time for some new work. Again I have been working verry hard in the screen printing department this time on a smaller scale though. I gathered different valuta from the countries that I see as the onces that had the biggest roles in the auto industrie (ok so I left out a few but I couldn't get valuta from all of them at this moment). After that I printed classic cars on top off them to show the iconic value and hoping to show the glabalization point aswell. I do have to work further into this and think about how to present them better. I will be looking into gathering old valuta that isn't in use anymore to represent the passing of the (in my eyes) great automotive era. Luckily thanks to the euro it should be easy to find European money from this time.

I have also finaly been able to find my way into the glass department, and although it is still a bit difficult to work in there I am finaly doing something with it. Hopefully I will be able to show you some of this in the near future. For now you will just have to do with some of my money prints (there are more on my website )

Start of the new project

I just got the feedback from my project and it made me think alot about what to do next. I have been focussing to much on my own experiences and now it is time to get some different input. I have been thinking about making a trip through the UK visiting the old car factory sites for a while now, and it is time to make things happen. First off I think it might be smart to start and find a local classic car group and start to ask them about how they feel about this subject. I started out with nationality which I then tried to show by cars, but I noticed that the work I am making isn't clear enough. I don't think this is just becausse of the work I think it has more to do with being somewhere else in my head while making it. Without exactly realizing it I moved more towards the globalization site of the whole car industrie and what that did to it instead of my initial subject nationality and identity through cars. ven though these subjects have so much to do with each other they are different subjects. And if you are talking about one in your research and showing another in your work it isn't that unlogical that people don't really get the whole idea.
So for now I will start to map the original UK car brands and try out where they used to be. I will also start to get in touch with people who know this world from a British side of view and ask them how they see it. Hopefully I was right about the subject so far.

End of Semester

Japan is about 1,5 week ago and time is going fast. This week we had to set up our studio for the end of the Semester review. Since I got sick in Japan and have been so when I got back in Scotland I only had one day to set up my studio. Luckily I finished my work before I went to Japan so I only needed to clean up all the mess I made. I made prints on Used cartboard with pictures of iconic cars, this to stay with the theme I have been using to try and show people how globalization changed the way we look at cars (and all other products for that matter). If you want to see some close up pictures of the prints you can visit my website: www.sanderschoonbeek.com. here is a panoramic picture to give you a little impression of what my studio looked like.

Japan

New year's eve and already in Japan for 1,5 week. So maybe it is about time to tell something about my time here. As most of you will remember this years snowfall and how the airports handled it (or didn't), well I was one of those lucky people to have a flight at that time. From Edinburgh to Narita (Tokyo) through Amsterdam (which was impossible). Instead of going back home and try to rebook something online I stood in line for six hours to gt rebooked. Because of this I was able to get a flight to Dusseldorf so that my parents could pick me up there. This way I could at least spend the weekend with my family and then drive from there to Schiphol (Amsterdam), to fly to Narita.
When I finally got onto the plane to Japan I couldn't believe it. After being nervous for about 3 days I got to spend my Birthday in Tokyo with my girlfriend (Manami). We stayed at a hotel in Asakusa and the first touristic thing we did was going to a Japanese shrine. After 2 nights we went to her parents house which is a bit more outside of Tokyo, here I got some nice country side views and some time to get adjusted to the new timezone.
I have to say I didn't really did that much research into Japan since my main reason of going was to spent the holidays with Manami, so when she asked me several times where I wanted to go I didn't know so well. Luckily from their hometown we could see Fuji mountain and since we don't really have those in the Netherlands I thought it would be nice to go get a little closer look. We decided to go to Hakone where we had a super luxurious traditional Japanese hotel. The hotel had a beautiful garden and several hot spring baths.
We went out to lake Ashinoko to get some nice views of Fuji mountain and off course some pictures.
On the way back we stopped to see a Japanese castle in Odawara, I had no idea we would stumble upon this which made the whole trip even better.

One of the other benefits of being here is that I finally get a closer look to the Japanese car culture. Since I am doing some research about the car industry and globalization and such it is nice to actually see some of the Japanese traffic and infrastructure so I can understand a bit better why their car's are they way they are (and I don't mean the ones made for the European market).

So this will be it for this year, I wish you all the best for the next.

Sander

Snow, snow and guess what....... More snow

So I know I should have made a new post way earlier, but to be honest there hasn't been going on to much because of massive snowfall. So unless you would have loved to hear about my research for my presentation (which I am giving tomorrow) there wasn't that much to talk about. The school was practically closed for the first week of December which  gave me time to work at home (on my presentation that is). We are doing a Pecha Kucha which means you will get to pick 20 slides/pictures and have 20 seconds to talk before it switches to the next one. This will give you about 6min and 40 seconds for your complete presentation. And since I am so experienced in presentations (not), this is making me quite nervous. None of us really know what is to be expected of us. And the fact that because of the snow it has been a while since I could meet up with a teacher to talk about it, doesn't make it any easier either. So to get my head of of that for a bit I am just going to show you what my new neighborhood has been looking like for the past weeks.