Essay by Isabel Hufschmidt, Curator and Researcher
That woman…
She is that woman who hates dogs and is
disgusted by the sandy beach, the sunny sandy beach. She is that woman who
wears a necklace with a rose dog pooping.
She is that woman I got to know just 5
years ago, July 2012, in
Cardiff/Wales, when I was supposed to hold a lecture on the occasion of the symposium Ceramics and Sculpture. Disciplines and
Shared Concerns at the National Museum of Wales.
It is that friendship that grows slowly
and steady, but with a strength that gives a damn on if you are living in the Rhineland and the other in Stadskanaal. The Dutch and
German get along quite well. Their obstinacy makes a good kinship.
Mirjam is the artist I experienced in
two different, but essential, spaces. Her studios. I first visited her in 2014 –
you can see: long-distance buddies. Mirjam had invited me to write a text about
Chris Baaten, a fellow artist from Amsterdam,
for whom she curated an exhibition in the Watertoren Stadskanaal. I stayed at
Mirjam’s place that she shares with Siebe, a known Dutch sculptor in
self-chosen retirement from art. Well, Mirjam had her working space right there
in Stadskanaal. At that moment she was about to leave that space as the
building was going to be dismantled. In fact, a happy instance for Mirjam, because
the space did not fulfill her needs completely. I felt that and she knew it.
But there, in Stadskanaal, I saw her works for the first time. Some little and
big creatures. In pastel rose, or Japanese green glaze, rough surfaces, soft
curves, a wriggling here, a bump there. A little zen garden in light blue.
There is black and lilac, too, and wax…ceramics in sculpture should be no
surprise or nuisance to anyone…the material comes from the oldest resources of
earth man worked with. Earth itself, clay, ground. Its dwindling rather not
foreseen. There they are, waiting for their mistress. Will you work on me today? No! No! Me first! No, me! – Calm, calm… Mirjam
tells me about her stations in life, her time in Japan
and Indonesia.
Then, just months later – it was 2015
already – she sent me images of her new studio. She wrote how happy she is, how
creativity is flowing. Best place ever. It took some time and I came for visit
again in 2016. And I did not know who takes more pleasure from the new studio.
Mirjam or the space itself? A big space, with enough room for storage, the
kiln, to arrange the works. Well, just to work. To do the work. The space, its
light and extension, I had to admit, surpassed the former studio a thousand
times. And I could see Mirjam’s pleasure in being there, at that generous
space. And it was not easy not to be seduced by the work she had produced since
2014. She experimented with larger sculptures, too, and her passion for
antagonistic glazes and contradictory haptic experiences, had come to the
point, had achieved an incomparable ease. The studio of an artist does not care
to be an essential collaborator. But it may be. Indeed, no artist studio runs
for perfection, for a beauty contest.
But satisfaction guaranteed…
Isabel Hufschmidt