An artist's book by Michiel Schepers

4.12.2014 - 4.01.2015

I recently received a book by post which really made my day. It is an account of Michiel Schepers time on the residency with Rainforest Expeditions. The writing is a bit like long aphorisms, at one level disjointed independent paragraphs, yet as a whole so very representative of how one 'looses' oneself in the rainforest, of how difficult it is to stay with any one thought, any one perspective, any one discovery or observation for very long. At the same time it is a sustained effort of obversation of everything between the forest floor and the towering canopy that obscures the sky above.

This week, Michiel came to visit for a couple of nights- interrupting his planned trip through the alps to answer my invitation. We were so busy together that I forgot to take a picture of the first Artist to have visited the first two Trelex Residencies - something that in and of itself felt like a massive event to me. I am so excited at the potential of Trelex Residencies to build international networks of Artists supporting each other...

Michiel had a bit of interaction with Secil Erel and Gizem Ünlü - presently residents at Trelex - but mainly we worked long hours together at tightening up the layout, graphic design, text, organisation and presentation of his book to produce a pdf, available for now on issuu:

The next step will hopefully be to print this into both a large edition for sale at the Rainforest Lodges shops and a small edition of hand-finished signed artists book for showing in Galleries together with Michiel's huge watercolours from his amazonian residency last year. A typical project for The Trelex Residency. And a brilliant example of how taking a chance on an Artist without any application forms will more often than not produce something of value that surprises both the host and the artist in equal measure - something that couldn't have been planned for without considerable anxiety on both sides of the equation.