Saw Trio-logy
When younger I always wanted to become a carpenter. It started together with the Lego-phase and always came back in the summer. Maybe it was just about hitting nails in the wood and saw planks, I don’t know. But I remembered that I was having fun by creating ,with a little imagination, planes and boats (that I tested in the water). Later I also started to made technical drawings of them, but I guess those weren’t that well because none of them survived the time.
Becoming older in school the making started to fall to the background, scoring high on tests and learning easily did get me to gymnasium in middle school. But the theoretical part was nothing I liked and I hated the homework, the only hours I enjoyed were the ‘Technical’-hours in which we actually were practically doing something.
Over the years my grades started to become lower and vicious circle was created. I went to the atheneum level and then to havo. When we needed to go to Leiden for our last two years and things at home weren’t all right I became one of the prematurely school leavers. Luckily I had a pass on to four havo and for that reason I wasn’t entirely given up on.
A year of working gave me the chance to refocus and put some research on myself. It came clear to me that making was not my real focus but creating was. For that reason I did went to the Graphic Lyceum and for the first time in life I started to enjoy homework.
I was able to get to know what the directions within the faculty were by doing and in that way was able to look what interested me the most. I was finally making my own choices instead of felt lead by a through the years more and more restricted system.
So reflecting on my past the creating and building things actually always have been in me, I liked to read mostly for fun and to be aware of the news (and maybe to get inspired) but nothing else. For that reason I feel lucky that something I then did for fun I can now do for work. Mostly learning by doing and practicing, making faults doing it over again and eventually getting it into my fingers by creating. It is something reading never can get you, it is what crafts make special to me in these times that is mostly knowledge driven.
I wanted to make a artwork in my atelier that reminded me of putting time into crafts and keep trying to get the quality on a higher level over and over again. Those three old saws are for me artefacts of where for me creating and making began and how I reinvented what I like doing.
It also keeps reminding me to a zeitgeist where every parent wants the highest education for their kids, but eventually do the child a shortage on himself for maybe not doing what he or she likes. A remembrance to the fact that high Cito scores and a high Intelligence Quotient are actually saying less about a child and creates borders for it’s own development.