Artist Rachelle Meyer uses her 12 minute ferry commute from Amsterdam Noord to sketch her fellow commuters and the city´s changing seasonsI started sketching fellow passengers on the NDSM ferry after I moved to Amsterdam Noord, which is separated from the city centre by a body of water called the IJ. The trip takes about twelve minutes, and it seemed like a great drawing exercise for the mornings. I´d loosen up with a speedy pencil portrait on the boat, cycle to my studio, and finish it up with fineliners and markers over a cup of coffee. This daily doodling evolved into an interesting study of how we choose to spend our time. We´re all in this state of suspension on the ferry, floating on the water, in a limbo between destination points. I was particularly drawn to people who were absorbed in reading books. These `dedicated readers` remained quite still through the journey, and it´s a loving testimony to the power of print. This original tiny sketchbook filled up from January to May 2017.When I flipped back through the sketchbook, I discovered that it also told a story of time passing on a larger level as winter opened up into spring. This gave me the idea for the Faces on the Ferry art project, which consists of a film of the original sketchbook and sixteen silkscreen prints extracted from sketches made on the ferry over the course of a year, four for each season. The prints each use a four colour palette, with one colour that carries through to the following season. This creates a flow, expressing the observations I made about time, as well as a series of vivid modern portraits of the diverse public of the ferries. Continue reading...
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