Time: 18-23 April 2019
Distance: 3864 km
Das Auto: Toyota Rav4 Hybrid 2018
The purpose of our journey was to celebrate the Holy Easters with our daughter Agota and my friends Vincent and Joseph. We started our journey to The Netherlands in the evening of 18th of April. It is always better to cross Warsaw at night when there are no cars on the road, and calm down the road. Only deer shining eyes were watching us on the road. After 8 hours driving, at night, we stopped in the small hotel on the highway A2. We did 591 km very easy.
Next day we arrived to small town in Germany, where lives our good friend and curator Martin Rehkopp with his wife Lisa.
In Westphalia, a region in north-western Germany, he did many great art projects with many good and world famous artists. Major projects were for promoting printmaking as art medium and artists from “big” countries and from “small” countries… He managed many international art symposiums, workshops and exhibitions. And maybe the most important were “snap” – International Printmaking Symposiums in Kloster Bentlage in Rheine. Here participated such great artists like Prof. Walter Jule, Prof. Sean Caulfield, Prof. Liz Ingram, Marc Siegner and Steve Dixon from University of Alberta, Prof. Davida Kidd from Canada; Prof. Ryoji Ikeda and Katsutoshi Yuasa from Japan, Yasu Shibata from “Pace Editions”, and many great artists from all continents. For a decade, the Kloster Bentlage in Rheine, this unknown place was the center of Graphics Art in the world, where you could meet the world’s most famous graphic Masters. And that did Martin!
In the morning we arrived in The Netherlands and with our daughter Agota decided to visit my good friend Vincent… Very sorry he wasn’t at home, and his house, where he was born in 1853 in Zundert in the main street, “Markt 29” was gone… In May 2007 the renovation of the house at Markt 29, and the neighbouring house, started. After the renovation, the Vincent van Gogh house was opened in August 2008. In reality I never had a dream to visit house of Vincent van Gogh, but it happened, maybe because it was Easter, and Agota temporary was living near this village.
We drove to Amsterdam, to Vincent van Gogh museum, but unfortunately for us doors were closed. It was opened only for people who have made reservation in advance, but not for friends of Vincent or art lovers. Times are changing, when I first time have been in this museum in 2005, I dropped my old Previa in front of the main door and went to see wonderful exhibition of drawings of Vincent van Gogh. Then I didn’t even pay for parking – I was a foreigner with a big car. Times have changed…
From Amsterdam we drove to visit our good Friend Joseph. Joseph was at home. He was waiting for us with his wife Ludi in beautiful house, in a small nice village Easterlittens, in Friesland.
Joseph Johannes Visser – the Great Man who did so many for Lithuania, for culture, for artists. And not only for Lithuania. Modest man who is genius: printmaker, typographer, artist’s book creator, composer, poet, translator. Man, who escaped from Amsterdam, from art noisy to small unknown village, and who consecrated himself for art. Here he established art residency for printmakers “It Plein 19”. He participated in many art projects in The Netherlands and in abroad. Many times he participate in the Vilnius Artist’s Book Triennial, several times have been jury member of the Artist’s Book Triennial. During his visits in Lithuania with the art projects and lectures, and artist’s book workshops in Vilnius Art Academy, Joseph Johannes Visser “discovered” Lithuanian compose and an artist – Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis. With his friend, worldwide acclaimed carillonists Auke de Boer, they started to adapt the M. K. Čiurlionis music to carillons and to promote his music in The Netherlands. Music of M. K. Čiurlionis was paying on the national radio of The Netherlands! Maestro Auke de Boer included music of M. K. Čiurlioni in all his concerts of carillons! Joseph Johannes Visser with his friends Auke de Boer, Bauke Reitsma, Christiaan Winter several times participate in Pažaislis Music Festival in Lithuania. Now Joseph work with another big project with Lithuanian folk music – he adapting it for carillons.
It was big pleasure to celebrate Holy Easter with Joseph and Ludi in small beautiful house full of art and love. It was nice Spring time, and a lot of tulips bloomed in the fields. The fields were like fantastic carpet. And in this flower carpet, somewhere lives Joseph.
Next Spring tulips will bloom again…
Kestutis Vasiliunas
© Photos: 2Cent., Roberta
© Artist’s Book Creators 2019