On monday 9th of september, a scientific team of the veterinary department of the University of Ghent was digging out an 18 meter long spermwhale, stranded on the beach some 24 years before. He was buried in clay-ground, and scientists were curious about the condition of the whale, more specifically about his bones. i witnessed the digging-up and again, the fragility of life and death was incredibly close: the smell, but also a kind of refusal to go, to decay and disappear. Liters and liters of blood came pooring out the wholes that scientists made to try and collect some bone-samples : muscle-tissue, skin, veins... everything still intact!  on the photos you can clearly see the eye-socket from the animal, laying on its side. The last photo shows you a rib.

Today a beautiful glass sphere arrived. Inside a lasered micro-electronescope photo of a chicken embryo. Five days old. With many thanks to the embryology department of Veterinary studies at the University of Ghent who took the time to listen to my strange requests and answered my questions, and many thanks to 'Net Meer Crystal' who never saw me but nevertheless took their time to make this very nice thing. Now up to the assembly of the different materials to make my work 'Quasar'. Can be seen on the next exhibition in April 2013. 

The exhibition is in the beautiful castle 'Le Paige' in Herentals. Nice place for this type of exhibition with every artist having its own room with his own atmosphere...

New works for the exhibition in Antwerp. 

'nepenthe/quells all sorrows with forgetfulness. 24 days.'
the word 'nepenthe' first appears in the fourth book of Homerus 'Odyssey'. It means 'that which chases away sorrow, grief or mourning.' It was a magical potion given to Helena by the Egyptian queen Polidamma. 
many think that Nepenthe might have been an opium preparation, perhaps similar to laudanum. The effects are similar to those of opiates.

The work consists of a small table with on the upper part four small glass plates. On the plates you find 24 pills, filled with words. Together they form the lyrics from one of Elbows great songs 'The River'. 


I walked with the river in kind of a dream

Hand in hand, the all-knowing river and me

To the glamour of rushes and deeply bowing trees

And drunk making blossom that blushed to be seen

I told him my sorrows and broken-down dreams

Confessed every lie, replayed every scene

He openly wept as he listened to me

And then, with the sun in the west, he showed me the sea

Next to the pills a glass of water and also the guidelines of how to take the pills... On the bottom shelve a small glass jar with blue stones - pure pigment! The 24th pill is also filled with that!

The second work is 'The golden L-pill'. A man is isolated in his glass jar, desperately seeking for relief... none is given. More photos of the works soon on the site. 

Earlier this week, I had the possibility to visit the Museum of Morphology in Merelbeke near Ghent (Belgium). A nice small museum on faculty of veterinary Medicine.  A beautiful collection of morphological museum specimen  of animals, preserved and presented in a very respectful way. The main purpose of the museum is to give students the opportunity to study the morphology of animals. to go have a closer look inside the animal...( heart, vessels, bone structures, intestines...) or for comparative reasons. There are three types of specimen: skeletons, moulds and plastinates.
 I was there for one of my artworks - a small series of animal embryo's I just started working on and for which I need as much three-dimensional material as possible... and a nice talk with a biologist/morphologist/art lover.
Some photographic impressions of the museum, and a thank you to the conservator!

links: http://www.ugent.be/di/morfologie/nl/dienstverlening/museum/
          https://www.facebook.com/pages/MuMo-Museum-Morfologie/120629578019106  

In its definite form, the sculpture will hang in the open air, so I'll make a kind of net to hang it in. Its shape should be seen from all sides.

Recently I went back to my old love: grasp a piece of stone, take time to discover it and then just take away bits and pieces... absolutely relaxing after all this figurative struggling, trying, shouting, starting all over again...
A very nice piece of blue alabaster is slowly turning into this strange piece of work - Slowly there is some balance crawling into this thing. Slowly turning blue, slowly sanding and starting all over again and sanding... With some nice music and no machinery for a change. 

hematite found in the sahara desert, Marocco

Just tumbled into minerals... This iron-based mineral hematite' is beautiful:  it can have the shape of a kidney, or a skull.  The Greek word 'aims' means 'blood'. In Dutch we call this stone 'glaskophematiet. 
Large ore bodies of hematite are usually of sedimentary origin; also found in high-grade ore bodies in metamorphic rocks due to contact metasomatism, and occasionally as a sublimate on igneous extrusive rocks ("lavas") as a result ov volcanic activity. It is also found coloring soils red all over the planet...
I have a small specimen in my studio: a present from my parents from when I was about 10 or so... my fascination for rocks and stones goes far back!

http://www.mindat.org/

Malachite is another , green and very common copper mineral, with a widely variable habit. Typically it is found as crystalline aggregates or crusts, banded in appearance. Until the 18th century, the malachite mineral wow used for its green color by painters...
For me it's all about the natural shape! Great stuff! Love it!