With the ending of my vacation in Europe and a few weeks of recovering to normalcy, I'd love to share a few images and thoughts with you. First of all, I didn't know what to expect in Europe. So upon landing in Berlin, I went to the only place I google mapped, Galerie Johanssen (the people who invited me out to Europe) where I found the crew hard at work on the "Illustrative Zurich" exhibition. Everyone took me in with warm greetings. Since I knew I had only 2 days here, I scurried onto a bus to get a quick look at my surroundings, followed by an unanticipated 6 miles of an aimless foot tour of the city.
Amsterdam, is so much more than legal weed and prostitution. Like did you know they have one of the largest moving structures on Earth? The Maeslantkering, is one of the projects initiated by the Dutch government to protect it's citizens from flooding. This immense plan took almost 50 years to complete. My last day, my friend Kasper took me out to the fishing village to eat herring (raw salted fish).
My first reaction to Zurich was, boy is it expensive to do things here. Consider that the conversion from Swiss Francs to US Dollar is only 1.13 and a Whopper meal is around 14 francs. Beyond monetary funds, Switzerland is an amazing land full of historic churches (one has a Marc Chagall stain glass) that have lasted over time. Above all, the reason I visited Europe is for the "Illustrative Zurich" exhibition. It was a showcase of Illustrators ranging from animation-to-sculpture-to-painting which was all sponsored by Swatch. They also put me up in a luxurious 4 star hotel! Thank you!!! Every morning we were served a huge breakfast that fueled me up till dinner. Dam'n, it all went by so fast. I hope this is just the beginning of a long journey.
It's 2009, and I miss Berlin already. Well, except the cold. So, my artwork travels without me and is displayed at the glamorous Villa Elisabeth for Illustrative 2009: Berlin (a showcase of contemporary illustration from around the world with invited artists: Tomer Hanuka, Erik Sandberg, Olaf Hajek, Lok Jansen and Edwin Ushiro). The second photo is one of my contributions to the show. The rest are a few photos that I snagged from the Illustrative website. Post!
