The past two months or so have been incredibly full. I have met and gotten to know some wonderful people, and though I do feel like I haven't had a chance to slow down and catch up on sleep in awhile, the art of what I've been doing has allowed me to appreciate each moment, which I won't quickly forget.
I was asked today what I would take back the most with me from my year here, and the answer was fairly clear to me: I highly value contact to people of many backgrounds and lifestyles. Getting to know them and hearing their stories and, perhaps the part most unique to my current situation, experiencing their life and culture along with them has expanded my horizons through an exchange of ideas and emotions. Ha! How cheesily perfect: here I am, at the end of my exchange year, talking about how exchange has allowed me to, well, exchange things.
As cheesy or not as that may sound, I do feel like I have had something to offer here, though in an unconventional way. The road has surely been lined with countless mistakes, on cultural, language, and personal levels. I have been amazed, though, time and time again, how much interest people have shown to me in response to my own indication of interest in their lives. I am particularly thankful to the members of the Duisburg art community, who have helped me to put myself out there and make a name for myself in this relatively close-knit but active community.
At last, to the central point of this blog post. Perhaps a little delayed, I wanted to share with you all nevertheless a little bit from my first solo art exhibition, which took place in April at the Kulturwerkstatt Meiderich, an art gallery space in Meiderich, a quarter of Duisburg.
The show featured drawings and watercolors from me, all of which had been created since arriving in Duisburg last September. My sketchbooks alongside works on paper were open to the public for three weeks.
The gallery opening, which was well-attended as you can see in the above panoramic photo (thank you again to everyone who came! It meant a lot to me), began with a show of some works from the sketchbooks, enlarged so that everyone could view and briefly discuss them together.
Josef Tobias, who I truly cannot thank enough for all of his help in arranging and hanging the show, opened the show. He introduced me and why I'm here, and explained the background behind many of the works and how they came to exist.
Below are a few more selections of hung works:
Lucky for us, Frank Fischer put together this awesome tour of the show for Duisburg 365, which you can view here or on YouTube. The video shows all of the works that were hanging, along with glimpses into my traveling sketchbooks.
Thank you also to my sister, Kimberly West, for taking all of these photos. It was great to have her there for the experience as well, and she was a great support, especially considering she couldn't understand any of what was being said.
Now I have a little over a week left here in Germany. I'm soaking up every minute of it and looking forward to bringing back experiences to share with friends and family in the U.S.
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