»Blönduós Have More Fun« is really just a silly word pun, making me think of both Marilyn Monroe and Rod Stewart. But I just couldn’t help it – my poor sense of humor and my equally poor way of pronouncing the Icelandic probably causing it.
In this series (comprising a total of more than 50 collages) I’ve been using materials found in the nearby surroundings of Blönduós, where I stayed in a one-month long internship at the Textilsetur Íslands, in May 2014. Materials were found on the shelves of the school or in local newspapers and/or tourist materials and were combined with the limited set of crayons and pencils I had brought with me to Iceland. A few have small amounts of the black sand from the Blanda river – wonderfully soft, but black, black. I just had to take some of it home with me.
The Icelandic language sports a lot of special characters like the eth: Ð/ð and the thorn: Þ/þ as well as a huge amount of accented letters – like ó, í, and even ý – so these will be in many of the collages. I really love type with personality!
Some of the collages are already on their way – a few stayed in Blönduós, others have found their way to Australia, others again have already been shown in exhibitions in various cities in Denmark. That’s one of the fabulous things about visiting other countries – you get the chance to leave your stuff behind and send it to foreign destinations.
