Designing buildings, I think on forms, functions and spaces. Designing jewelry, I concern the form. I like to create objects for exhibition, for in this case I can go beyond the sensitive issue of the ‘wearability’. Decisive architects and architectural motifs inspired my exhibition set “Adornitecture”. Buildings of Carlo Scarpa, Italian architect are characterized by the unexpectedly appearing details, related to crafts. One of his medals refers to a hollowed-out door corner, another to a mosaic window.                                                                                                           .

The golden whale of Frank O. Gehry above the Barcelona harbour gave the idea to use copper mesh. Seeing the brave and unusual structures, the network of steel cables, amazing bridges and halls of Santiago Calatrava, we can think that the modern architecture is nothing more than an enlarged jewelry.

In my undergraduate years I worked in a Florentine architect studio. Even today I benefit from the spirit what I met there. Being an architect, I have a beautiful and interesting job. But, I started to learn the goldsmiths’ craft, because I want to realize my ideas without using computer graphics.

It is a great experience to create my objects with hand and tools. At the goldsmith vocational school my exam metalwork was a Mokume-gane bracelet. This Japan-based technology bases on combined use of various metals.

Meanwhile I applied for jewelry design course in Milan. Teacher-artists consulted individually with me, being like a private student. I designed and drew from morning to night. I got my degree at maximum points. My chosen theme was “The Silver and its companions”. In addition to silver, in my collection created copper, precious stones, wood, textile, paper and perspex were featured.

At home, I realized several jewelry design of Milan. This medusa necklace was purchased by a young architect as a Christmas gift for his sweetie. I have not found a due yellow stone for my yellow bracelet, but my master in Milan is keenly waiting it.

The jewelry is very personal. I need to know who will receive it. On the finger of a lady judge, such prongs on a ring carry prestige. This green tourmaline, inlayed into a half-cut green gingko leave will accentuate the green eyes of the owner.

The trends in design jewelry are fairly variable. Extravagant pieces are looked for in Germany, England, or in the States, whereas the Italian taste is conservative, and restrained against the provocative outfits. In this country the unique jewelry is becoming perhaps more popular, but the classic gold jewelry still has great appreciation.

For the Week of Design, I compiled a collection of concrete: “The Reversed Rings”. I played with material structures: what surface can be made of impressing the linden leaves from the garden, the lace, the leather, the plexiglass, pearls, or metal chips.

My medal-obelisks are the part of this architectural experiment. When not dealing with buildings, I make jewelry without limits, working totally free. I like to construct such special forms and surfaces that surpass the imagination.

Gunshot, then window crashing. A surprising show at an exhibition. Below the glass ceiling of the Műcsarnok, the number one exhibition venue of Budapest, a replica of a typical country house, standard in the sixties. I walk around the tiny house for the third time. On one side, behind the curtain, an old woman is peeking out. At her neighbour, glass clattering: the window was broken by a stone thrown. Turning the corner, at the window of a conceited fancy blue wall a man waves his mobile phone. Opposite him a gunshot. Scenes of the „Another Hungary” exhibition. I am just setting forth when the creator of the „house” appears, a humble man of gray beard, bringing a pot of red fresh geranium. He carefully places it to the old woman’s window, changing the withered one.

We waited a year after the exhibition of his life work to visit him at Mezőszemere. The autumn sowing turns green at huge lands, the rich soil is browning dark. At the Main Street unplastered houses, two rows of brick and a layer of adobe. We meet the postman at the deserted street, dog runs behind her. „Do you see the brown fences? A thatched house. You can find him there.”

There is no row of ready-painted pictures. All items are packed. Only one painting is on the wall. We are just afraid of not seeing the familiar green-rusty-ocher colours with the flaming red. „This is still unfinished. I am painting a series of the icons of my grandmother.”

„I just finished a video installation, so I put away any others. The Vörösmarthy Theater of Székesfehérvár will put on a stage-play, titled ‘Master Class’. It is an imaginary conversation: on the eve of the Day of Music, Stalin and Zhdanov, his culture politician are talking and drinking with Prokofyev and Shostakowitch. Next day both young composer will be sentenced to death.

The director, György Cserhalmi visited my exhibition and he decided to ask me to design the sets. I really enjoyed it. I asked some of the villagers to take part in this work. Helping kindly on the recording, they will poke their heads from behind the ’prison bars’ ”.

He is preparing an exhibition of „The master and his apprentice”. He shows some engravings. „It is a mistake to think that just anyone can be an artist after graduating. When I was 18, I made linocuts, and at age 22 I already had exhibitions. Besides the pictures of my student I will present my early works. In this drawing you can see the start of the abstraction. It needs a restoration, it is torn, I tore it. I have no idea, why.

That time I started to deal with the ’land art’. They did not rely my long hair and my beard. My poor mother had heard a lot about me, but only until one day, when the ’Heves megyei hírlap’, the county newspaper reported my exhibition. For then, I was forgiven. Yeah, if he is an artist, it’s OK.”

„In the eighties I worked at a screen-printing workshop in Budapest. We pressed T-shirts and labels for jeans. Punk was trendy that time. We kept ourselves and we had enough time to do art. These screen prints and lithographs were made that time.”

„The change of the political regime did not mean anything to me.” After two decades, for personal reasons, he moved back home to his village, where everything has changed. The agriculture, ensuring the village’s livelihood before, wasted away. A new look of the earth appeared: apathy, strange gossips, weird plants, clear-cut groves… a land of mysteries’.

Attractive countryside? It is hard to believe. There must be a reason, why an artists’ colony was developing around him, an artistic-intellectual workshop. Artists moved to his next-door, apparently with different motivation. They work as they used to, they have mature style. They are independent artists, respecting the freedom of thoughts; they are defending the environment and their norms together, making the invisible visible.

http://www.campfilm.eu/index.php

Ring in!

Our first post was uploaded on 13th November 2010. Along these 3 years, we visited and reported 116 artists and masters of crafts, praparing huge amount of written and photographed information. The number of blog visitors reached the 100.000 mark. Three consecutive times the mutermek.com was selected as “best ten” by the technical jury of the Goldenblog competition. But, we overgrew the website, we need to change!

Our goal is to facilitate the use of this blog. And we plan new contents as well: presentation of the art objects (paintings, glassworks) being on sale at the KisKép Art Gallery, and reporting events at our gallery as well as around us at the Castle District. Due to technical reasons, order of the artists’ reports changed ⎯ the date of the interviews is at the end of the text.

We’d like to thank the visitors interested in contemporary arts and rare crafts for their constant attention, for reading both the Hungarian and English version. With these thoughts, we wish you a merry Christmas and a happy new year!

“To Anna, to be hopeful” – these words for me were written to his catalogue by János Fajó, when we met first at his exhibition. I was eight at that time. A few years later I became his disciple at the Szerencs Art Camp, turning into painter there. He often said: “believe me, you know something what the others do not”. That time I did not understand what he meant. The geometry was easy to me, I am expert in this craft even now, and now I know that what I create is coming from my inside clearly.

According to the fundamentals of the Free School, we works with scissors, cutting, folding, translating the forms. We make small-scale models of everything. Among the elements of the geometry, I am mainly interesting in the transpenetration, as the colours affect each other.  I spent a whole summer experimenting, just mixing colours. I feel free to use the colours.

My paintings are represented in famous contemporary collections, I have taken part in international exhibitions for 15 years. My original portfolio of colour screens was printed in 2008, of course, focused to the transpenetrations. Working as an intern in London at a famous designer, I gave her a copy as a birthday present. I thought she put it away to her archives. To my surprise, she put all to her wall, framed. She loves them!

I wanted to have a practical profession, one whose every movement can be performed by me. Painting is a part of me, but I graduated as fashion designer. I learned it all, from the beginning to the end: cutting and sewing, digital design. I have a professional exam in textile technology.

I was 24 when I signed up to the London College of Fashion. It turned out that I got exemption from the preparatory term, because of my grounding in textiles and painting. I learnt fashion design, tailoring, and movie theory. I had a master-disciple relation with the teachers. They, as professionals, acting designers, fitters of great expertise, happily gave constructive criticism on our works. They left to reveal our individual talent in design.

We have worked in a supportive atmosphere. Among us it was matter-of course not debunking the work of others! There was no rivalry. We helped the other as we could. We had to work hard. Sometimes we were given a task, what nobody opened after. We needed to learn the craft just for ourself!

Half of the students were English; the others were Asian, European and American. In this international ambience, it was interesting to see how the Asians were working assiduously. Knowingly, an own factory at home waited many of them. They had a mission, and I liked it. I returned home with a mission as well: to accomplish my childhood dream, to initiate my brand, the ANNCHI.

As a designer, I transform the approach of the painting into the dressing. While a painting is complete in itself, a dress reaches its integrality with its wearer. Designing for an individual, I am eager first to know the personality of my client. I must find what is the most beautiful in her figure, and what need to hide to feel good. It is important to me that she would be delicate wearing my dress, but not weak.

The ANNCHI collections based on each other, having a system. Their typical feature is the geometry, the clean lines, the versatility, and the layering. These are not separate pieces of wardrobe, but elements, inserted simply to the existing set. For example, the shirts. They are simple but easily combinable pieces, yet full of exciting details. Any woman should have at least one perfect white shirt.

20/10/2013 Budapest

“ My new boots are hung at the nail, rust covers its spurs”… “My darling wears framed boots, she loves me really”…”My boots are knocking that you already do not love me” At a wedding party we are singing these tunes: folk songs, lieders, proverbs, full of folk wisdom pertaining to the boots. But you could barely meet nowadays the boot maker, who created the boots, reminded in these old words. And whose knowledge and tools were handed down from father to son.

“The Hungarian hussars wore high boots of soft upper. Hard upper boots were started to produce around 1910. The peasants preferred it, because it was good-looking, and gave an easy gait. “ You must see a lads’ dance of Kalotaszeg, or a recruiting dance of Vasvár – palms are clattering loudly at the uppers!

“The first piece of the boots is the upper. After stitched together, it is turned inside out “. To get a hard upper, the leather is hardened, and the upper contains Kraft and a layer of burlap, glued together. You must work fast, because you can turn out the upper until the paste is soft.

Since hemp cannot be grown here, it is difficult to get base material. The sturdy canvas is of India. Therefore, of necessity, many use plastics. Plastics have different properties, so the uppers are sown from outside, and the seam is covered by a strip of leather. “They are not real bookmakers, for they do not turn out!”

The next point is the bootlast. Burred boots are made on a special wooden mould. The leather for the head of the boot is formed on this last. The other procedure is the tongue one, when a separate piece of leather connects the head and the upper. Head is formed first; a layer of skips serves for buttressing. In contrast to the shoes, head of the boots are fastened to the sole by wooden pegs, not by sewing. The last phase is the listing the edge of the upper.

To order boots, it is not enough to give the size of the sole. Instep thickness, throat size, and the perimeter of the calf are needed. You need to decide whether the steam will be at the back or side. But, to pull over a side-steam boots you need to have a flexible foot! There are curved-upper boots as well. “At the State Folk Ensemble was a lad of curved legs. I needed to fit him his boots. Of course, it is better to cut it shorter.”

The boots of women and kimmers itself is a prestige and beauty. Its type and pattern depend on the region, being the same mostly for 4-5 villages. At Kéménd, the red boots decorated with globular bells was matched with the multi-layer short skirt. At Méra, they wore rich textured, wrinkled red boots. At Rimóc, the traditional boots were burred, sutiled ones, made of lacquer leather. Having taken great care of them, these were used on Sundays and special events only. Women brought the boots in hand to the front of the church; just there they stepped into them.

These boots are ordered mainly by dance groups, or bought for tradition. Here, at the boot maker workshop decorated by gold diploma, guards’ boots, Bavarian boots with large buckles, riding boots (the high uppers are for defending the ankles) are made.  And, for virtue-loving folks using these at the “ancient” Hungarian wrestling, high-upper slippers were fabricated, what Mongolians are fixing to their feet with bands.

An important piece of the traditional folk wear is the “character shoe”. It used to be called “reaper” shoe. Laces or straps fixed it. On it, women went out to the grain fields to harvest, to defend their soles on the stubbly field. An other particular type is the “renaissance” shoe, with U-shape cut-outs, elevated heels, and pointy nose.

A pair of boots of hard uppers is ready in 18 hours. It is interesting that at the beginning of the last century a Ford Model T was assembled in 19.5 hours. Few people could afford both. Well, this is the trade of boot making.

10/12/2013

What is the difference between the etching and engraving? “If I enter a gallery, it is engraving. If everyone else, then etching. The dry point (engraving) technique is very accurate. One tendency of it is a precise academic style, the other is called free incision. We cut the same line from both direction with a the razor sharp chisel”- he shows it bending over the magnifying glass. “In the cooper etching, there is a lot of unwanted effect. Unreliable. To prepare bank notes, documents, stamps engraving is used.

The 500-forint note was safe, as well as the 100-forint one, delineating Meggyesy’ sculpture, ‘Mother and Child’. It was a team effort in which I participated.”

„Csaba Rékassy, the true professional engraver, was a true bohemian. This is a story on him. Just before Christmas he borrowed 500 forints from his mother. He gave back with delay, so he made a banknote of 620 forint, containing, as he thought, the interest and the inflation. He wanted to produce few copies only, so he crossed out its back. I engraved the backside, presenting a strange alchemy workshop, titled ’How to produce money of shit’. My director normally understood the joke, but I was fired.

Polyvalent colouring enriches engravings. What is more, it is possible to apply subtle shades inside a colour, using different depths of carving.

Using powdered rosin, the aquatint method can make the surface more exciting, that is, more tonal. An excellent example for this technique is this picture: „If my grandmother were the Queen of England”.

According to the classical standards, beside of the title of the printout, the artist marks the technique of preparation (often abbreviations are used: C2 cooper etching, C3 engraving), as well as the paper type and the copy number/sequence number.

His ’ex libris’ activity is listed at international level. Publishers are well aware, that they always can count on something strange, stunning. „ You can not know in advance what is capturing immediately, and what will be a good stroke later. They are afraid the skull. If erotic, they are considering: what the neighbours would say?”

His paraphrases can be easily understandable knowing the Bible, the lives of the saints, the history, the literature, the arts… and the small and great things of the life. There may not be a taboo in the world on which we could not laugh! Others apprehensively think that there are things not object of joke. But, everyone has the freedom to decide. „Sapienti sat”.

Along the line of the engravings, not free of irony, we please to discover „Annunciation the gasoline engine”, „Lot fleeing from Sodom” bringing thousand objects of the modern life, „ Jacob’s dream with the angel” showing looms and tailors in the Heavens…

And Our Lady marching to the Heavens by embroidered elevator surrounded by angels. And, enhancing the mental tensions: what is the play of the devil?

22/12/2011 Budapest

The last few months passed with feverish work. „I myself could not understand how we succeeded to finish the reconstruction of glass windows of the Matthias Church on time. Each table was subtlety picked up using small-size diamond cutting disks. Here in the studio the tables were dismantled and the original lead patterns were fixed with strict accordance of the restoration principles and rules. All phases were continuously documented. We made new elements for the damaged pieces, and for the foreign replacements, definitely needed to be replaced.”

“Graduating at the Salgótarján high school, I started to work at the Salgótarján Bottle-glass Works besides Mr. Sándor Erdei, glass artist, who was my mentor as well. After graduating the College of Applied Arts, thanks to György Buczkó, I might frequent the Tokod Glass Plant. For us, it was the best choice in this country. Melted glass was available in large quantities. We could test the size and form limits of the hot glass production. For the safe design and production, you need a sound knowledge of materials. You can learn and progress using your errors only.”

“I am working with hot glass using the recent real possibilities. It would be nice to practice a lot more. These trunks were made recently. At the end of the blowpipe the molten glass is formed by the gravity, by the centrifugal force and (minimally) by the tool. I like the molten glass, as it is formed right before my eyes and by my guidance. It is important that the pieces fit together exactly, to stand on each other.

“I am interested in the statics of the objects, where a piece of glass holds an other in a structure. At my objects I seek a floating effect. The sculptures, integrated by fusing, become exciting plastic experiments, just because their substance: the glass itself. I look for the boundaries in my constructions. This, of course, causes some headaches, and requires high driving of experimentation and a lot of patience.”

“I can not decide whether an object, fashioned in clay, would be good in glass. I am creating unique pieces, using plaster molds only once, I make no rubber molds. When a plaster mold is ready, I contemplate over it a while, whether it is really what I want. Then I put the size-cut glass flakes into the mold one by one. It is like a domino. If falling over, I must start again.”

“I am dealing with frontal-set objects most, and my sculptures are posted on massive pedestals. I mainly prefer the black-and-white contrasts. The most exciting and most interesting details are those fitting the two colours, or being shaped the curves. I try to make the glass as thin as possible, and the dark parts appear like glass, revealing the internal structures. “

An artwork can not „act” below a certain size. The smallest piece he made till now perhaps this piece of cake with a candle, actually a concept of a souvenir. For our part we can imagine that somebody would be pleased getting this piece as birthday present.

It was understood that many things can fit to the geometry. The shapes of the „pop-art style” lying figure can stretch our mind more than any other human description. How much effective is the figure, legs flailing, if somebody wants to create the parody of the „Seasonal Greetings”! And it is an all-over humour, that a sculpture with a turquoise application got the title „Right Eye of Terrence Hill”.

3/12/2013 Budapest

Ferenczy Noémi Prize (2003)

President of the Hungarian Glass Art Sociaty

It happened on Sunday, the first day with spring sunshine. I started to prepare the lunch in high spirits. To make the salad, I grabbed the spring onions, cutting off its roots. I was to throw away the parings into the waste, when I noticed the lush roots, and I felt sorry for them. Running down to the workshop, I threw a big bowl, pressing the tangled roots into the middle. “Sunday lunch leavings” – it is the title.

The Bowl is not any plate. It has a message. For a wedding party, a Shaman bowl was ordered (I made two of it, both were purchased). It was a great amount of mental labor. I gathered all the emblems, Moon and Sun, connecting Heaven to Earth. Snakes of prehistoric patterns wriggling, frogs jumping, folks dancing wildly. Be a great joy, I thought. It became so.

“I do not care if I meet a special request. I had some difficult customer. For example, the Hungarian countess! Being a chatelaine of a Loire chateau, she managed a house as a headquarters of the French-Hungarian relations in her estate. It was a long time ago. She asked me to build in a blind window using Hungarian motifs. I suggested the genres of the traditional gingerbreads from the 19th century – ploughman, hussars, coach, and horse. She liked the idea, but she insisted to the original vivid colours, while I wanted to match the colours to the hue of the brick wall. Finally, I made both. For her, I meticously painted the pelisse of the hussar in red, boot in black, pants in blue. At least she left me a glazed object, but for parole, I had to promise not give it to anyone. Finally I could retain the mould of gypsum”.

“This workshop has the snuff of my mother!” says her daughter, Réka, entering, when she observes the sulphuric air of the burning clay and minerals, coming from the kiln. She grew up in this cosy, warm, fragrant atmosphere. For a long time Györgyi has a workshop with a huge kiln in the attic of a downtown Pest house. She sat at her potter’s wheel as at her throne. Between her hands a porcelain-thin globe vase was spinning. She encouraged us: “Play with the clay!”

Even now she could teach hundreds of her ideas. How the kitchen roller, a fishing line, or anything at hand can be used. What is eternal secret: the glaze! For high level glazing you need thorough knowledge of minerals, good sense, and skilful hands.

“Nowadays we can fire salt-glazed ceramics in Kecskemét. A dangerous procedure. Zsolnay knew this technique as well. According my recipe, I ground the ceramics using different minerals, and then heating to 1000 centigrade. While it is cooling down slowly, salt solution is sprinkled to it. The result is unique and unrepeatable. It is like marble.”

“It is hard to get date for firing. Once upon a desired date I was making a large relief. It was 2 o’clock in the morning, time was short. I was just putting the layers on layers. Then the clay was not able to bear its own weight, and collapsed. Angrily, I mushed all together. In a daze, I got a handful clay, and I made the statue ”Impulse”. It became later the guardian angel of my new workshop. One of the numerous guardian angels…”

21/11/2010 Budapest

Personal details

Education: apprenticeship in ceramic (Hódmezővásárhely, 1966); diploma of teacher’s degree, mathematics and drawing (Szeged College of Pedagogy, 1971). Member of Hungarian Art Fund. 1971-1980: expert at the ceramic workshop, Museum of Applied Arts, Budapest. 1975-1981: teacher, Zebegény Free School (ceramics).

Works in public and in public collections (examples): Kutahya (Turkey), La Habana (Cuba), Kossuth Museum (Cegléd, wall ceramics), Janus Pannonius Museum (Pécs, figurines)

Deceased in 2012

Even I was at the university, when my brother-in-law opened a coffee-shop. To decorate the wall, he put a painting of me there. You could not decide whether man or woman was depicted on it, it was funny even in a „classic portrait” category. Then, ambling homeward one night, the waiter caught me: come in, somebody is interested in your picture. I was so surprised that a Dutch professor wanted to buy this large painting, and I asked him with confusion: if he displayed the picture at home, please send me a photo. Receiving the photo, I grasped for breath: I was displayed beside an original Vermeer…

Lajos Ernst had a reputation for being great patron of arts. He made the Art Nouveau style house built at the Nagymező street, that at the ground floor he run a contemporary art gallery (museum now), and he arranged two ateliers at the top floor. We moved there in 1984, for my father was a painter as well. On this studio podium Horthy sat for a portrait, as well as Rákosi later. Now it is a playground for my little son, Arisztid (God knows, what he will be once…)

Our family has had a general attraction of fine arts, somebody as „perpetrator”, others as collectors. Minna Herzog, my great-grandmother represented the chiaroscuro style, the academic „studio” painting. I stand for the fourth generation of the painting. To open relentlessly a space on the plane, to play and to direct theatre with a paintbrush — it is an eternal love.

We painted many times side-by-side with my father. His death was difficult to accept. He left a huge vacancy after him. His friends, Tibor Csernus and Kornél Szentgyörgyi corrected my paintings even later. The hours, when talking on compositions, themes, technics, lightings in the studios of Szentgyörgyi at the Forint Street, Budapest and of Csernus in Montmarte, earlier owned by Picasso served as lectures for a life. Their ateliers meant landmarks to me until their deaths.

The windows of my studio let through not only light but music as well. I always work on music, whether I want it or not. Either summer or winter I enjoy the leaking sounds from the Conservatorium (High School of Music). Of course, I let the music effect into my art. If I carve, however, something else, I go back side to paint there. On the south side I am attracted by the variety of cold and warm colours, and the inexhaustible play of the fast-changing lights and shadows. I hate the static stage.

When I was ten, I play tennis in competitive mood. Although trainings were every day, Saturdays I drew nudes at the Postman Club, instead. When this was discovered, my coach became furious. I got two weeks to decide. Of course, it is important to me the sport, I am inspired by the throbbing, the variety, and the speed. The water sport is like the painting. You must overcome the elements alone. You are grabbing the ropes with benumbed hands, praying to survive. Then disembarking, you look back to the stormy waters, and start to look for an other sail: a canvas. A lot of canvas was inspired by the high waters…

I am a curious person. I visited a lot of places to discover new models, colours, picture breaks, landscapes, alien words. During my study tours even I found the Venus at Syracusa. Outside heat of 40 centigrade, inside chilly 20. Shivering, I grab my pen, drawing the soft and round lines. Around me the black-suited ushers. They pointed that I might get closer, and cleared the cordon. And, winking, they called me closer. Just waking up, they were embracing the cool marble profiles. A great picture! I love Fellini…

A woman’s body was created for admiration. Still I am impressed. But it is the symbol of the consumer society. In the madness of consuming we even do not realise what is around us: fashion shows in the church, or electing the „best female bottom” at Titian’s land. I could not believe my eyes, when at a misty highway near Venice a prize-winning body part appeared on a lorry. Slightly modified, I made a picture from it. Of course, this is just a good excuse for a painting.

“Here we are/See: this is the castle of Bluebeard/No shines like your father’s one/Judith, do you follow me?”….Who does not know Bartók’s passionate opera, in which at a ‘star-lit black night’ along the tear and blood-soaked gloomy rooms the young lady in love, praying for the keys of the secret doors, meets her doom, as the fourth victim of the prince…

The ‘Bluebeard’s Castle medal series won the ‘Honorable Mention’ award at the 30^th International Medal Art Exhibition (2007, Colorado Springs). At this biennial exhibition of the highly regarded international association only the First Prize was given, apart from this mention. The ‘glory’ of the old wood was a breakthrough inside the medalists’ circles.

A friend of mine just wanted to burn a rickety jointing plane. The traces of tools and the time sealed its fate, the wood wore out, and the holes lost their shape. How to capture the waters of forgetfulness, how to present this drama? I drew circles around some pieces with pencil, saying: “Please cut out these pieces and the rest can be burn”.

According to the regulations of the medallist exhibitions, an accepted object must have 15×15 cm size maximum. Today, artists of the medal art are stretching the extreme limits of this genre, using unusual materials and variegated forms.

We can find the classical, well-known medals at the displays on the wall, while the irregular “printouts” of profane subjects are in the drawers. But here are the two-sided medals with “window”, grabbed convulsively by wistful collectors: “I need this!”, and they do hope not giving up any more.

The “mounted” medals are made of shining pure steel with perfect accuracy, even if they would be tricky moving, sound-generating parts of a magic device.

Our foregoing knowledge in medal art is altering drawer by drawer. Along the bubbles encapsulated in plexiglass and along the magic Far-East writings, there are animal skulls, inlayed into finely chiselled wooden disks. And “art boxes”, which are able to tell us everyday stories, seceding from the strict interpretation of the medal.

The disks, triangles, squares, coconut shells, all decorated with feathers, shells, pearls, semiprecious stones, and laces, are not for expelling the evil spirits. The cultic “proto-coins”, referred to the beginning of our civilization, are fictional objects. Early times similar ones served as money.

As a laic person, we have an impression that we might call ‘medal’ every artistic objects of a man’s palm size, what tangibly represents the proceeded value, be a cultural heritage, a human performance, or the life itself.

But the objects of the Past can transform not only into medals. Pieces of broken clocks, out-served tubes, trumpets make the row of “clock sculptures”. And the iron, deprived from its substance, recalls the nailed objects of Man Ray.

My father was a sculptor as well. When I buy a hammer in my childhood, he wondered: “I have a lot of hammers in the workshop”. But I said: It is mine!”. Somehow it started…

27/10/2013 Budapest

Fontosabb díjak:

1993 – Arcok és Sorsok, Országos Portrébiennále, Hatvan, Aranydiploma fődíj

1996 – 9th Cloisonne Jewelry Contest, Tokyo, Encouragement Prize

1996 – Fej Vagy Írás, éremkiállítás fődíja

1997, 2007 – XI., XIV. Országos Érembiennále, Sopron, Civitas Fidelissima díj

2000 – 7. Országos Faszobrászati Kiállítás, Nagyatád, a város díja.

2002 – Masaccio 600 International Art Medal Competition, Ein Vered (Izrael), Special Mention

2003 – XIV. Országos Érembiennále, Sopron, Civitas Fidelissima díj

2003 – Rejtő Jenő emlékkiállítás és pályázat, Budapest, Petőfi Irodalmi Múzeum, I. díj

2006 – II. Articum Nemzetközi Képzőművészeti Biennálé, Szolnok, Szobrászati díj

2006 – Ligeti Erika-díj

2007 – XVI. Országos Érembiennále, Sopron, Ferenczy Béni-díj

2007 – Art Medal World Congress FIDEM XXX, Colorado Springs (USA), „Honorable Mention”

A Magyar Képzőművészek és Iparművészek Szövetsége, Éremszakosztályának elnöke

Among the properly cared houses with porch, along the well-arranged street of Swabian style, even the summer heat is not as oppressive. Leaving the famous Calvary hill, there is a ruined wall at right, and a colourful glass window in it, and the door. „This is the coat of arms of Magyarpolány, the village; I put it here to defend the yard against the wind”

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We step into a surreal garden. Glass bubbles defend wizened trees, branches are cradling fist-sized balls.

Waist-high luminous sculptures are among grass tussocks. Before our feet the breeze makes antennas of fused beer bottles whispering.

„Aged for twenty years inside me, finally I have started the headboard series now. I carve the fundamental laws of existence into colouring glass pegs. Only a few bits of this material can colour hundreds of bottles to green or blue.”

„I attended a high school of arts, with major of ceramics, and I was the first to graduate as glass artist at the Kolozsvár University of Arts. I become a designer at the Prodcomplex Glass Factory of Marosvásárhely/Targu Mures. We produced ornamentals and glasses. During 13 years my 600 models went into mass production. I was the first professional designer of the factory, but, as freshman, I was instructed by the old masters as well. I had complete freedom, I could use gold, platinum, lead…what comes into my mind.”

“I built a workshop at my village, Nyárád-gálfalva. Just I finished, the official notice arrived, that we are permitted to transmigrate to Hungary. The family moved in 1986, I was 40 that time, when I started my life again. We knew nobody here. I became a designer at the Ajka Glassworks. After the transition, my workmates were slowly worn out, the mood changed. So I left.”

„I started to establish a plant in Magyarpolány, but the production did not start because of financial problems. I fitted up this little house as a workshop. I applied to reconstruct the 56 m² colour glass windows of the Lutheran Church at the Városliget Fasor, Budapest. As a reference, I used the lead-glass windows of the St. Stephen room at the Veszprém County Hall, as well as the details of my own window prepared for this application. When I finished it, I was able to work just on the same level, as at the time of Miksa Róth. I procured the work.”

„ I teach ceramics at the School of Arts, and I run study groups. This year, upon request, we announced first time the Glass Camp. Parents are difficulty understanding that there is nothing to fear for the kids, when they are excitedly rummaging among the broken glass, assembling their first kaleidoscope.”

They have everything, what needs for managing ceramics and glass. Kilns, pottery wheels, a small furnace, a kiln for fusing glass, polishing machines. They have a special tool to make millefiori, here is an antique lamp made of this peculiar glass.

No hams hanging in the attic, but there is a small showroom, as he says , “the book of recipes.” You can find an example for all the equipment and technology, what he used or developed in the course of his life. If you want to know how to bite a glass, or what miracles can be produced by this craft, then you can go there and look for the „glass master with straw hat at the end of Polány”!

18/8/2013 Magyarpolány

“ I was thirteen, when I won a prize at the National High School Photo Contest. I lightened my sister before our aquarium using a 500-watt lamp. I won with this profile photo, but fish perished because of the heat.

“Even before the WWII, Agfa produced the first colour film, and the cameras manufactured that time by Leica and others had significant value. Therefore, these were cached during the war events. After the war, a little later, the ambushed family cameras were turned up. This was the story in our family as well. Since that time the most frequent activity was the family outing, cameras served to record what we saw.”

“I was particularly interested in the technical details, so I was enrolled to the Forte photochemical factory. Later, at the mid-sixties, I joined the Corvina Publishing Company. Its task was to survey and to record our cultural heritage. For this reason I had the commission to photograph the murals of Hungary. Everyone pulled out of this task, for nobody wanted to carry a device of 60 kilo with accessories. But I was very happy for the opportunity. “

In great part due to this work he was asked to photograph the Holy Crown of Hungary, as well as the coronation robe later. Since then, he illustrated more than 80 books on museums, artistic monuments, artists, cities, and landscapes.

Years ago, it was an idea at the University of West Hungary to establish the Department of Photography. For its curriculum he started to compile a textbook on the colours. The idea was aborted, but he engaged into this subject to such an extent, and he detected so much exciting knowledge, that he wrote the book “Colours: the deeds and sufferings of the light – the everyday of Goethe’s colour theory”.

“One day I realised why Goethe’s bust was in the my grandfather’s library. He once mentioned that Goethe drew the circle of colours, but that time I did not know to connect myself to the great poet by means of the colours.” Once upon a time Goethe looked into a prism, and the sight made him to immerse into the world of colours.  He accepted the Aristotelian view, that is, generating the colours need the meeting of light and darkness.

During his investigations of several decades he created numerous theories. He discovered, inter alia, the magenta colour and the polychrome shadow. If a dimmed object  is illuminated by a red light, we see the gray shadow of the object to blue-green. However, this auxiliary colour appears only in our brain, because our mind aims to be comprehensive. Goethe was not able even enter to a restaurant without addressing the colours.

The prudent and entertaining book, the device demonstrating the colour mixing, the colour chess – these are only means to understand the relation of the colours, and how they affect us. Shaping the colour taste is an artistic and social task, ranging from the colouring of the buildings to the fashion styling and the commercials.

“ Image managing software packs are set to produce pictures of hot colours. To take an acceptable photo is not a fine art, and in this way the photography as an artistic activity is descending temporarily. For creating a really high quality picture it needs, however, an inner passion, a message, because the photo represents a spoken language, and the colours have to support the message.