Hello everyone!
I apologize for infrequent blogging, but this week was more busy than I expected it to be. Currently I’m on my way to Brno, Czech Republic, and it’s gonna take about 6 hours, so I decided to spend this time gathering stuff from previous week. I’m listening to sweet tunes of Swedish House Mafia performance in Madison Square Garden from 2011, if you got nothing to listen to, I definitely recommend you this 2hrs long set!
Starting off with Tuesday, this was one of the most thrilling and exciting days of my life. I can’t give you a factual and reasonable answer why, I just had a really good time throughout the entire day.
Out first stop was Andy Warhol Museum of Modern Art in Medzilaborce (still Slovakia). I’ve been there quite a lot of times before so I didn’t really care about what our guide was saying, plus we didn’t have a permission to take photos, so I was just editing an article from Monday the entire time. But seeing temporary exhibition was only one part of our visit there. We also had a workshop set up for us. And it was so fine! Namely, we got to try one of the techniques Andy Warhol used. Now let me tell you a little bit about him from what I remember, just so you’ll understand better why they set up such workshop for us as part of this project. Andy’s parents and siblings were born in Miková, a little Orthodox village in north-eastern Slovakia. His mother was one of 13 children of which 5 later died, she married his father in a young age. Before WW1 he moved to Pittsburgh because of work, however, she stayed here because her parents were already deceased and she wanted to take care of her siblings and her own children. First child was a girl, which passed away very early. Then two of his brothers were born. However, after WW1, she felt like her siblings are ready to take care of themselves, so she emigrated with her two children to Pittsburgh as well where she reunited with her husband. There they had their third kid, Andrej Varchola. Or, in English, Andrew Warhol. He’s always been interested in art, however, his growth as an artist was slow. At first he was just an ordinary designer for advertisements for various products. He wasn’t content, he dreamt of his works being displayed in galleries. Nonetheless, his style was so unique, that he made it to the galleries, and became the most known pop-art artist of all times. Important thing is, that he didn’t come up with pop-art, neither was the best artist of such kind. There were many more amazing artists, like Roy Lichtenstein or Keith Haring for instance, but his designs were so catchy and original, that he soon became one of a kind. Campbell soup cans, Marilyn Monroe, numerous imperials….all of these works are highly praised and remembered. Why? He was namely able to create series and then precisely choose combinations of colours. How was he able to create such series, and why are they not as even as they seem to be at first? That’s what this workshop was about. We learnt how to create copies. Maybe you’ve noticed that contours of his e.g. models are not even, and they differ a little bit on each piece. Ours did as well. First we got to choose from some black & white images of random products. I chose this shoe. Then we got this thin paper, on which we were supposed to trace lines of the aforementioned image with a thick pencil. Then we turned the thin paper on the other side and started to trace lines drawn with the thick pencil step by step, and printing them on thick acrylic paper which we put between this thin paper and paper with the shoe. Afterwards we just took some watercolours and painted the final images. Since we did not have much time, we couldn’t repeat this process as many times as Andy would (oh, how dare I), but we learnt the 101 basics of his most frequent technique and that was the main aim of this workshop.
After this unique experience we moved on to Humenné, where we had a guided tour around the local chateau. We were supposed to visit an open-air museum as well but unfortunately, it wasn’t possible. However, during entire April is this manor house hosting an exposition of traditional regional Easter eggs, and that’s what I’ve been looking forward to for weeks!
Later on we had a barbecue party in a nearby lying village and let me tell you how amazing that one was. I mean, it was too cold for such open-air party, but still, it was nice, I was just thinking that it was a pity that nothing like that took place in Greece, it was a great way to get to know all these people better.
All in all, it was a very fine day. Maybe it was just because of the domestic environment, or this party of people was just good, but already on Tuesday evening I knew that this Erasmus+ week was going to be special. And as always, I’ll keep you updated with the rest.
Have a great day!
Asequibles 