Can´t Wait For Paris!

A few weeks ago, I won two VIP tickets to the Crazy Horse Show Las Vegas. The people at Crazy Horse were kind enough to exchange them for the show at Paris. (Thanks Crazy Horse!) I wouldn´t have had the time and money to travel to the States to see the show. I was pretty excited to get the tickets, but then I had a hard time thinking of a friend who would like to join me on the trip. Not a lot of ladies I know would like to see this kind of show. 


13 years ago I had a similar experience. I saw an ad in a newspaper: a trip to Paris for 4 days / 3 nights  including breakfast, the bus trip, admission to 3 museums, 2 guided city tours, 1 boat tour on the Seine, and a few extras for the price of  100,- DM (around EUR 50/ $60). Considering that you have to pay a lot more than this sum just to travel to Paris, my boyfriend didn´t want to join me. He said there had to be something fishy about the offer. I didn´t really care, because it wouldn´t be too bad as only $60 were involved. Actually I was really disappointed that he didn´t join me. When I told my sister about it, she was as excited as I was. So off to Paris I went with my sister and it was a great trip. We both enjoyed it a lot.*


So I asked her to join me this time too, though I know that she´s not too excited about seeing naked ladies dancing. We´ve both had a lot of stuff going on the past weeks and months. She´s just completed her studies as an early childhood educator and I´m currently at home with both kids. They´ve got the whopping cough and have been home for a long time. A few days off will be great for both of us.
Best of all: I could finally buy my first Moleskine City Notebook and I´m excited to fill it with some sketches and lots of places I would like to visit in Paris.



* Did I ever mention the story, that my sister and I went to a local restaurant with only a French menu. None of us could speak French and we were both feeling very adventurous ordering something on the menu - without knowing what we would get. Expecting some French speciality, we almost peed our pants when I received roasted chicken and my sister received a Bratwurst. :)

"Take-Away" By Artacks At STROKE.02

One project I really enjoyed watching at the STROKE.02 was "Take-Away" by artacks. I could have stayed for hours watching the artists and the kids were cool and watched an hour too. Artacks is a group of Swiss artists originally from Bern situated mainly in Basel and founded by four friends. Their project "Take-Away 2.0" is urban art made by these swiss artists and one international guest. 
Basically there is a wall with 77 boards and 11 artist work on more than one board at a time. As soon as the viewer likes one of the pics, he hits the red "Take-away"-buzzer, all artists stop working and the viewer picks out his board and pays for it. The board gets numbered, stamped, packed in boxes and handed over to the buyer. The hole in the wall is substituted with an empty white board and the artists continue their work.
It is great to see how flexible the artists are, how they collaborate with each other and how they just continue with the empty parts. So every time you pass the place where they were working on the boards you could see new and different works of art (specially because the artists work with different techniques and styles: spraying, drawing, sticking, painting, stencils, ...).
The red "Take-away"-buzzer:


Two boards were just sold:

The holes in the wall:

This lady used stencils to create her art and she never managed to work for more than 10-15 minutes on a board, because the viewers always grabbed her boards before she could "finish".


My kids (here my son) were fascinated and watched an hour. My son then decided that he wants to spray the wall of his room too.


7 boards sold at once:

The board I bought (by different artists, but mainly by SYLG):

Here is the list of the participating artists: 
Ian White Cutterskink,  SYLG (Sandro Galli & Yves Lavoyer), Mathias Schneeberger, Jens Gander & Patrick Muchenberger, Zaira & Bustart, ras le bol, Pascal Zobrist & Luca Fuchs (wallume I legenden)
Click here to  find some first impressions of «Take-Away 2.0» on their website and  watch a German tv spot by merkurtz.tv (F. Eckel) about their project in Munich.

More Impressions Of STROKE.02

Have a look at some phantastic pictures of STROKE.02 at this gallery.

STROKE.02 Urban Art Fair Munich May 27/30

Stroke is a Europe-wide art fair for contemporary and so-called street art.

The fair took place in the building of the former Central Bank with more than 55 galleries from all over Europe presenting artists on more than 14000m². In addition Stroke.02 presented live-paintings from the finest artist: Ma’Claim and Herakut, Shoe, Claudio Ethos, MAC1 and Pisa73.

During the 4 days of the fair there was a “LEGO Live Charity Battle” with up to four artists letting their imaginations run riot and building larger than life LEGO artworks. All visitors were invited to use their creativity and build on the biggest lego playground ever. My kids were happy to spend one hour with Lego after I dragged them through the 5 levels of the the building, crammed with people.

More impressions and some pics of a special project to follow...