On Holiday in Stuttgart

This art show in the red light district in a parking garage left me with mixed feelings. #fumesandperfumes Sex, fashion, perfect bodies and provocative images in an “urban” setting. I guess it’s cool to see art in unexpected setting, but it seemed a little like hipsters slumming it up. I think it is important to learn to analyze what we see in public art and be able to criticize the messages being fed to us. I feel like luxury and money are a fantasy we are feeding to youth to keep them distracted and mental slaves to the capitalist machine. I guess you had to be able to be there and see the show to have an opinion, I’d have liked to have a conversation with other artists to find out what they saw/felt. The kind of conversations I’m hungry for at the moment.

 

I got a hair cut for my birthday! At Melli’s Dos n Dyes

Melli and her friends took us to an international dance festival. There were dozens of traditional dances and costumes. I particularly liked Peru, Mexico and Spain. I saw someone in traditional Japanese costume but we didn’t get to see them. Where people go to study these dances? Are they locals or did people travel from all over to participate? I’ve studied dance and it interests me because of my love of music and the desire to move my body with grace to the music. Traditional dance and costume are a great way to learn about a culture..Some of the few things left that link us directly to our specific history and past.

We visited the Cube for the first time. Kunstmuseum Stuttgart. They had quite a few Otto Dix paintings. He’s one of my all time favorites.

Every time I visit Stuttgart, since I was asked to tattoo the t.v. tower, beer and pretzels, I make a collection of photos. Any sightings that are interesting get photographed, I hope you can bear with my obsession/compulsion for the next few images. If this is something you find curious click on the first article below.

This is the local market, I think it is open every weekend. The booths were so cool!

This was the only photo I took from an exhibition on music:

In Germany, mostly in the suburbs, many people have a “summer house”. These are usually grouped together and have a garden for growing fruits and vegetables. Melli’s family has one and they use it for family get-together s, picnics and bar b ques. One great thing about living in Europe is that just a three hour train ride away is a totally different language, people and culture.

I went to Berlin to visit a dear friend, that I hadn’t seen in many years. I also had a few days of work at Taiko Gallery, tattooing with Guen Douglas. Next door to the tattoo shop was the cutest little gallery and atelier of the artist, Johan Potma. The Cheese Mountain Tradgey

There’s a new graffiti museum called Urban Nation. If you go please be sure to see the whole exhibition, we missed a huge part of it, I’m not sure how, maybe there is more galleries upstairs or around the corner. Ask at the front desk.

There was a french school near where I was staying and they had an Eiffel tower replica, so of course I had to pose.

When Trinity heard I was coming she offered to host a little art show of prints at a little ice cream shop she works at.

While in Berlin, I got to visit the studio of my friend Silke, who used to live in Hamburg. We also got to see some murals that she did on a tattoo shop.

From the moment I arrived in Berlin, I noticed a strange new graffiti. I wondered how in the heck they were able to do it? Plus it’s everywhere! I kept reading PARADOX. So my friend did a search and found this really cool documentary on ARTE (it’s in french). Their crew is able to do these pieces by scaling the sides of buildings like mountain climbers.