Bright Trade Show was the first stop for our traveling group exhibition, 'Where On Earth Have You Been?'
4 to 6 hours from Amsterdam is Frankfurt, Germany. Again, the proximity is just tasty! Frankfurt is an entirely different culture and has a really nice skyline. It isn't all fabulous though.
The city is intensely brown. Various Shades, but brown brown brown.
There is good public sculpture for the most part, but Lil'Shy commented on a particularly ugly one of a Giant Glowing Blue Euro Symbol floating in a lake of Golden Stars. It was awful and she summed it up nicely in her very french English, 'Zis has to be ze most fuckhing uglee zculpture I have eeever see, it es sooo fuckhing terrible.'
I met up with my longtime friend Sonja Bergstrom, we used to work together at GOOG design in Denver. she is from Germany and is back living in Frankfurt now, her place, Bergstrom Studios is the bomb! She is so gifted and the visit to her place was a highlight of the trip. She and her partner Rafael make these really great sheep stools. She's going to be a mazillionaire from them.
Let's see, what else. The streets were very clean, except for the homeless people, but they were clean too. In a weird way they didn't look homeless, well accept for the couple we saw 'shooting up' in broad daylight in the middle of downtown. That was weird and really stomach churning. I always flirted with trouble and don't mind a few grinds in my coffee, but I can't even look at hard drugs, Thank God. I ate a big hamburger.
The Trade Show was cool. We skated the bowl, and it was cool. There were some nasty lines being drawn in there by some of the amazing skaters. Good skaters are like Kung Fu masters.
The Where On Earth Have You Been exhibtion was well received. Many people told us it was their favorite thing at the entire event. I saw some other amazing stuff. Saw Jon Fellows new Hession Mob skateboards in the flesh. Hooked up with my sponsor and grabbed some new
kicks.
Jeroen and Lil'Shy were very fun to travel with. We made a good team, curating together and working the whole time side by side in near harmony. We even got our party on one night.
It was fun, dancing, and drinking hard, except for Jeroen who is one of those great people that doesn't drink or do any drugs whatsoever and just has the best time out. What up Vin Comparetto and Andrew Novic! Lil'Shy and I however got hammered.
Then, somebody I know
proceeded to absolutely 'smash' the club. At one point, she even had some boys in such a frenzy that she wrote on this guy's teeth and all over his face. When I came to try and herd our little princess into the taxi, the dude threatened to kill me, but I told him it was hard to take him seriously because someone had just tagged his grill.
Here he is the next day. 'Es everybodys frenz, no?' He was cool, Shy was the coolest.
Hopefully we'll be able to move the exhibit to other locations soon and keep adding more artists to the collection it was so impressive to see everything up on the walls. I was really really happy with it.
The most popular pieces that we showed were the Kenjon Bajus piece he made from 'working in centimeters', Evan Hecox once again, the Dutch artist, Shoe, and the Jeremy Fish original painting I bought at the show Ryan Riss curated in 2006 at Andenken called, My My Hey Hey.
German countryside was really nice, rolling hills and old farms.
Fancy bathrooms in a gas station in Germany were like the chill room at a rave. Sweet smells pumping with ambient music. They even had these self cleaning toilet seats that were so 'german jetsons'. I'd never seen that. Then again, I've never paid 50 euro cents to take a huge dooker at the filling staion in Germany. I felt a little out of my league in that bathroom, a little under dressed. It was almost like a limousine ride that bathroom.
When we got back to Amsterdam I felt really glad to be 'home' which is exactly when it hit me, 'I live here now, with my family. This is my home.' Such a good feeling, I really hope we can stay and stay and stay.
As far as Where On Earth Have You Been? We need to make a long list of artists to add to our collection and start searching for funding.
Anyway, as we say in Germany, super ciao!
