Last year I made a sculpture in Riyadh in Saudi Arabia, during the Tuwaiq sculpture symposium. It was organized by Riyadh Art, which at the moment is one of the largest public art programs and part of Vision 2030 of the Kingdom.
The sculpture is called “Awareness” and is made of white marble from Oman. It is 335 cm high.
Irish limestone 210 cm high
A beautiful new symposium was born this year in Baarlo, Limburg, in The Netherlands. It is quite unique that a symposium of such high quality can take place in The Netherlands. The country does not have a great tradition for stone sculpture. But the people of the town of Baarlo see it completely differently. As the town will celebrate its 800 years birthday in 2019 the idea to organise a symposium to bring 6 new sculptures into town was born.
the place where the sculpture are made
Six international sculptors were selected and the sculptures were chosen by the population of Baarlo. With great enthusiasm 170 volunteers helped to make the symposium into an even greater success.
visitors on the working place
Now we just have to wait until the summer of 2019 to see the sculptures installed in Baarlo.
Up north there is a town called Os. It is situated south of Bergen at the Bjørnefjorden in Norway. Here the daylight stays all night long and the water and the mountains are changing their colors from black to pink and from blue to white. The green winters, as they call these summers up there, are cold but beautiful.
granite 125 cm high
I had the honor to be invited to the Os international sculpture symposium to make a sculpture in Os this year.
For many years the sculptor Arne Maeland together with the people of the Os Kulturutvikling Committee were able to bring sculptors from all over the world to work in Os and it has become a beautiful event that is cherished by the people of this town.
visitors to the workplace
A few months ago I made a sculpture for a cemetery called Moscowa in Arnhem, The Netherlands. It is made of new imperial red granite and is 225 cm high.
When the sculpture was created the inner space arose. And as I was gazing through this inviting window, hoping to see the other side, it appeared to me that these two worlds could meet.
“Through the brilliance of any image , the distant past resounds with echoes” G.Bachelard – “The poetics of space”
visit also my website: karinvanommeren.com
This month,during the event of the international symposium for monumental sculpture, I made another monolith.
The stone called Blanca Limon, comes from Cordoba and is a beautiful stone with white and green crystals. The event “Santiago a cielo abierto” was held in Santiago del Estero , a place in the north of Argentina.
Over the course of ten years an international sculpture trail has been created in Maine, USA. This trail is situated all along the coastline and consists of 34 monumental, granite sculptures. Two years ago the idea was born in Canada to continue this trial of sculptures along the East coast of Canada.
As I could participate in “Sculpture Saint John” I was pleased to make a sculpture for St. Andrews, a beautiful town in New Brunswick at the Passamaquoddy Bay.
The granite comes from the local “Hampstead Quarry”, a quarry of gray-pink granite. The quarry was last worked in the 1990s.
“The story of the stone” granite. 280x190x80 cm. (the picture was taken on the workplace)
Stone is the earth on which we walk,
it gives us life and it carries our history.
“Brèche Romaine”
When you come into Saint-Béat, you can find the “Brèche Romaine”, an old quarry that dates back to the time of the Romans. The story tells that in this quarry the “Monolith of Lez” has been carved out. A column of almost 30 meters that was meant to become the Column of Trajan. But the column never arrived in Rome and probably stayed in Lez, the nearest town.
But if you take a close look at the quarry you still can find the traces.
My sculpture “The Monolith” , made of marble of Saint-Béat, is placed next to the “Brèche Romaine”
the quarry of Rap
The village of Saint-Béat is situated in the south of France in a beautiful narrow valley of the Garonne and is surrounded by mountains rich of marble. At the time of the Romans the place was well-known as “Passus-Lupi” (Passage of the wolfs) and famous for its quarries.The marble was used to built Roman towns as Lugdunum Convenarum, which is called Saint-Bertrand-de-Comminges today.
Since the year 2000 the “Association Marbre & Arts” (www.marbre-et-arts.fr) organizes a festival of sculpture and marble (“Festival de la sculpture et du marbre”) in Saint-Béat. During three weeks every summer the village becomes again “the city of marble” and the marble of Saint-Béat has again all the attention, for its history and as material for contemporary sculpture. And every year a monumental sculpture is placed permanently in town and this year I had the honour to make a sculpture for Saint-Béat.
Karin van Ommeren Sculptor 