This past week was so crazy and so amazing, and to be honest I can’t believe it was real. I got the opportunity to participate in an international project where 77 young artists from 7 schools in poland, germany, belgium, france, and ireland came together for week-long workshops in different facets of art leading up to a big exhibition held at the castle of Namedy, Germany. I took the photography workshop, because this was actually the form my photo class was in this semester for Trier. There were also workshops in ceramics, architecture, land art, metal sculpture, visual art and illustration, performance and media. Everyone stayed in hostels in the town over called Andernach, and we took a 5 min train every morning to Namedy to work on our projects at the castle all day, and came back every night to chill. For some reason I was really outgoing all week, and ended up meeting almost all of the 77 student and it was so much fun and some of my french came back to moemory and i also learned a few things in polish!


Communication the whole week was extremely interesting because it played so many good and bad roles. There were a few kids who didn’t talk much at all and after a few drinks weren’t so afraid to speak in english with me, and then there were kids who were extremely talkative and funny with little mistakes. I didn’t really get much feedback for my project at all, which was the worst part of the language barrier, but it was also good to have such a new experience of being so free in what I chose to do and how I did it. I learned that I didn’t really care for it and I work the best with rules, but good times anyway! My old roommate Silke was incharge of the whole thing, with another guy Dirk, and I was so impressed with them. It really was an amazing opportunity and I was so happy to get Silkes text offering me a place at the castle!

Here are a few of the photos I had in my final presentation. I hung 7 frames from a tree in the courtyard with my photographs in them, and left one frame open. It was the biggest gold frame, and I set up a small table infront of it with 3 disposable cameras for anyone and everyone to take pictures of themselves through the frame. It went along with the theme of the whole project which was “transforming memories.” My concept was based on how the too-good-to-be-true reality of being in a castle and being surrounded by so many artists and creative energy was just so surreal and didn’t really feel “real”. This was reflected in my photos by taking real things and making them abstract and dreamlike. And I was happy because I didn’t have to touch them in photoshop minus the red one where 2 pictures were put together. Here they are, hope you like em!