Tuesday, May 28, 2019

FGA at La Dépendance in St-Imier

From 15—27 May we were artists-in-residence at La Dépendance in Saint-Imier in Switzerland. La Dépendance is a tiny idyllic summer house nested in a once kind of bourgeois garden with conifers, and apple tree etc. But now everything is overgrown and wild. The house belonged to the hairdresser of the village and is 100 meters remote from Sur Le Pont, a big old house that was once an Inn and restaurant. Now a group of 9 (young) people live there. It is a heterogenous group all with different professions and most of them are from Basel and 7 years ago they bought the house and it took them years to renovate it. A year ago Jan van Oordt—he is an artist—bought it for 35,000 CHF and he has found a nice way to earn back the borrowed money. He calls it Drawings for La Dépendance.



It works like this: Jan asks people (not just artists) to make a drawing (or several) on a sheet of A5. They have to send them by post to St-Imier. With the collection of drawings Jan makes exhibitions and tries to sell them for 1 CHF. He now has a collection of around 10,000 drawings and has sold 2,500. He still has a long way to go.

No comments: