44 Alice's Work (At Least Today)

“I believe in Alice’s work! At least today”, Markus smiled. “Give that to me, I will write it down for you”, he said. Markus took over the little booklet in which I note people’s believes. He wrote a little poem. It goes like this:

Der Glaube schweift ums Schaffen

Und füllt sich wie ein Glas mit Kraft

Und trinkt darauf, dass Du es schaffst.

Faith revolves around creation

And fills itself like a glass with strength

And cheers to you achieving it.

More or less like this – the translation is a bit bumpy. This whole project revolves around faith: It is the faith in the creative process, the work, which gives shape to art.

That day, Markus was wearing a blue shirt, and with my blue hair, it felt like a harmonious match. So, I decided to pour blue onto that little canvas like water, filling the canvas with strength. It is a technique similar to the one I used for my own smallest initiating the work. I added some glitter and gold, mirror pieces and glass stones. My favourite ingredients, and symbols of ongoing creation even with things that seem to be broken. The stones are a hint to Markus' work:

When we talked, that was in early summer 2023, Markus was building an art portfolio. The topic? A single stone. He was portraying that stone in numerous variations on paper. Worked on it again and again, drew the portrays of the stone into the surface of the paper with charcoal and pencils. Extracting, interrogating, seeing, feeling, how much he could bend that two-dimensional paper surface to give life to the three-dimensional stone. Never before had I encountered such an idea. Through Markus’ work, it matter-realised.

Thank you, Markus, for letting me create this! And thank you for believing in my work. I believe in your work, too. For a fact, I believe in every artist’s work, in their artistic processes. I am tempted to rename this smallest into not only Alice's Work, but The Work.