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Do I have to turn forty to become an artist?
I had to learn to leave my stories behind. The kind of stories about your life you tell yourself over and over again until you believe them. And still they are only stories and as such exchangeable. Of course there are also stories around art schools. What is your art school story? Why are you here? Today I wanted to tell you mine: My grandfather wasn’t allowed to study art because he was partly Jewish. He had to leave high school early, in 1930s in Wroclaw, former Prussia, now Poland. He couldn’t live his dream, but had to become a factory worker. This story left me with a mission: Because I was the artistically talented one in my family, I had to study art to get it off the family check list. A likely story, isn’t it?
My other art school story goes like this: When I was 16 years old my grandmother asked me what I wanted to be later in life. She was a great role model. She managed to be one of the first female medicine students in Germany. I proudly proclaimed that I would do something completely different from the paths of my family of professors and doctors — and told my over 90 year old grandmother that I wanted to be an interior architect. She replied that that was a good idea, that I would be a great wife who could decorate the house of her husband nicely. Of course I rebelled and I gave up the idea of being an interior architect immediately. At the same time I…
