Klara Brynge reflects on her time as AiR in Idar-Oberstein

"As an AIR I worked at the Jakob Bengel Foundation and Campus for Jewellery & Gemstones. The sites are very different, still in the elementary matters connected. The Bengel facilities filled with layers, historically and physical, traces in floors, chairs, materials and walls from workers, jewellery making, and a flood that filled the lower rooms in the 90s. In the shelfs thousands of tools with holes and outlines of jewellery compounds rests, a storage of galalith, a material made from milk and formaldehyde, used to imitate stones remains.

All this bears witness on a material level and is connected with life. I felt a reminiscence of in-between spaces, as the place found a space for that in me. Idar Oberstein is both a global and local place where all somehow is specifically Idar Oberstein, at the same time things and people travel here from the world and meet via craft, community, trade, materials, art and connections. I came with a wish to work with my hands and material. I spent most of my time in the stone workshop cutting stones. Stone has a resistance not so different from metal, but its properties are very else. The processes I went through investigating material language, on the surface and sculptural, is for me connected with developing deeper themes and questions of nature, body and landscape in my work. 

I find inspiration from a connection between the surface of the material and its mass and inner spaces. I made work by taking material away or making traces in surfaces to interact with colors, patterns and transparency. The surface in stone reveals its inner, a crack, a grinding trace, a shine. Jewellery making, the context of the place, mechanical repetition and stone cutting formed a setting for my thoughts and experiments. Warm thanks to all staff, students and everyone at the campus and the foundation for making this an astounding time.

Thanks to The Swedish Arts Grants Committee and Estrid Ericson Foundation for the support."