Joya: AiR / Kim Bartelt / DEU

‘Thinking of Joya: AiR is for me thinking of a quiet place. A place which can be found in all of us, but which is not always accessible. Here, in the midst of a natural reserve you only have to close your eyes and you are immediately connected to it.

You hear the bees humming, the birds singing, the wind blowing, you feel the sun on your skin and the air in your hair.

The hard, but round, stone I’m sitting on grounds me, generations before us have used this stone to press crops.

The circle closes when you know that the wind turbine generates electricity for the house, the sun heats up the water through solar panels, the water is being cleaned, and hopefully the well in the mountains will bring enough water to Joya: AiR again once the plans are being executed.

The humming continues with the busyness of the other artists, all here to create, everyone investigating ‘their’ piece of land, their space, their interests.

Joya: AiR is an energy spot in the midst of a deserted landscape, which brings joy and new ‘fuel’ to everyone who stays here…

One week after my residency at Joya: AiR I still carry the calm inside me.

My days are less organised, I take more time to breath, to look around, to hold on for a moment, to not do anything for a short time. Something that is so natural over there. You look up from your paper and look into the distance, in the landscape, the valley in the back of the house.

This is a sensation, a memory, which is carried on. I can ‘replay’ it, when I need it.

During my residence at Joya: AiR, I had planned to continue working on my works on paper. These works are made of leftover pieces of tissue paper resulting from the cutouts of previous work.

When I applied to Joya: AiR, I had seen images of the landscape, and the house itself with its interesting ceiling structures and stairs, many geometric shapes and spaces which I wanted to investigate and take as a starting point for my works.

Once I was there I was overwhelmed with the greatness of the landscape, and therefore started with the small square view from my bedroom window...

A few sketches of the spaces.

And then I felt the need for bigger paper.

I had packed some of the tissue papers which I use in Berlin, and went through them to find shapes and

colours relating to the environment at Joya: AiR…

I start by testing how the shape works within the confines of the paper, then I glue them onto it…

3 big ones done, all 57 x 75.7 centimeters big, I ran out of glue sticks…

So I went for a walk in the dry river bed near the house. I was hoping to find fossils, but I didn’t, except this big one below, unfortunately impossible to take home. While picking up stones I realised that some of them weren’t stones, but pieces of clay. I took some with me…

Back at the house, some of them started to fall apart, and I wondered, what if I soak them in water and make them soft again, could I use them to draw on the paper?

First tests on small Fabriano watercolour paper…

Here I combined the riverbed clay with a sheet of paper…

‘I took some little rocks of clay with me to Berlin, of course, and my Joya: AiR series is not finished. I still have many more things to do and will enjoy thinking back to this wonderful time.

It is so impressive what Donna and Simon have built there, with their hands (and the help of others), what they do to maintain this beautiful place and how they welcome artists from all over the world, who then sit together during amazing meals which Donna creates (with Lucy), and which nourish us all and give the base for exchange. It is an immense advantage for creative work not to have to think about organising and cooking food, but to have the head free for other things and then, after a long and intense day, to look forward to the meal in the evening.

The encounter with people of different nationalities working in various disciplines adds another dimension to the residency, there is so much exchange, we were such a wonderful group together that one wonders: how do Donna and Simon choose the people?

I would love to return to Joya: AiR any time. There is so much more to explore. So much more which I cannot put in words.

So much more I would like to work on, investigate and absorb to have it enter my artworks which can then hopefully speak to other people about this special place, better than my words can’.

Kim Bartelt . http://www.kimbartelt.com/

Simon Beckmann24 October 2019