last friday i paid a visit to the huge office building in the hague of the ‘oc&w’ ministry (education, culture and sciences) where i was given a guided tour of their homebase and in particular the (permanent & temporary) art collection spread around the large numbers of offices and division within the ministry
they have acquired a number of our ballet posters for the collection and it was great to see them ‘in situ’ and hear some of the reactions from the people who look at them everyday
two weeks ago, we spent a day in the studio with dutch stand-up comedienne ‘ellen dikker’ shooting the poster image for her new show ‘horten en stoten’ an expression which translates in english as ‘fits and starts’, the literal meaning however is more something like ‘bumps and scratches’
the day mainly involved wrapping ellen in protective foam sheets, covering her in plasters and bandages but we eventually settled on a rather uncomfortable and large orthopedic neck brace, the brief for the image in terms of styling was ‘mid sixties record sleeves’ and the image was shot by rietveld photography student ‘martine folkersma’ with assistance from ‘bernard van dongen’, we will be working on the actual poster during the coming months…
last week i attended the ‘vroaam’ career day together with my intern ‘joris’ (yes we have noticed that we look quite similar) as usual it was an interesting experience to meet young students and try to offer some useful advice… in fact having my intern along was also very handy for adding a different opinion and viewpoint on matters
the selection for this years ‘best dutch books‘ competition has been announced this week, amongst the selected works are ‘raoul deleo’, ‘irma boom’, ‘piet schreuders’, ‘willem van zoetendaal’, ‘michaël snitker’ and my good friend ‘syb’ with two of his fantastic photobooks, congrats from me…
two of our books were selected last year and one the previous year, it’s nice to be in such esteemed company
once again the ‘dutch design awards’ is open for submissions starting from today, as usual entry is free so good luck…