He was ‘unfit’ for work, he never lasted more than three months. Until Jan Ketelaar became an artist. His work of art Waiting for high tide even seized him for the past ten years. On Monday the second and last statue of a woman will be placed on the dike near Holwerd. It is his double revenge.
They no longer call him. The fuller lady of Waiting for high tide has been looking out over the sea on the dike near Holwerd since December. Now follows her thinner girlfriend.
It really feels like finished”, says Jan Ketelaar (60) in his workshop in the old Sluisfabriek in Drachten. For the past few weeks, he has been putting the very last straw on his work of art here. In 2010 he started on the two five-metre high metal-welded women’s statues. I worked on it for ten years, the last six of which were full-time. Especially at night the ladies called me all the time. For the first time in a very long time I’m now sleeping out again.” About emotions at the approaching farewell, he doesn’t elaborate too much. When I sit down at my feelings I cry terribly. I’m as unstable as a door.”
Never before has the Hoogezand-Sappemeer-born artist been able to surrender to the same work for so long. Ketelaar paved the way to his career in 1984 at the Pedagogical Academy. My specialisation was drawing. I already noticed that I liked that, working with my hands. In the period that followed, I also painted a lot.” But to make ends meet, he had many jobs. Barkeeper, subject filler, seismologist assistant. I even tried to start a walnut farm again. But I never actually did anything longer than three months. I don’t want to do this all my life, I always thought.”
Incapacitated for work
His restlessness resulted in 1996 in him being declared unfit for work. Weird, because I didn’t want to do everything I didn’t track according to Social Services. Meanwhile I knew that I wanted to go to Minerva. I couldn’t do that either, I was told.” At a farmer friend in his former home town of Zuidwolde, he nevertheless saved up the tuition fees for the Groningen art academy. By planting cabbage and the like. But when I had the necessary 1500 guilders, it was withheld from the benefit I received back then.”
Yet in 1997 he was in the classrooms of Minerva. “My wife Wilma paid for my studies.” That study turned out to be a golden opportunity. “I ended up in a very warm bath, that really helped me.”
He also found his place in the arts. “Now I’ve got something to catch, I knew.” He painted, made a documentary and completed his artwork The State of the Netherlands. That consists of two men. A thick zeitgeist of never enough and a thin, pointing man.”
You can grab a hand of both women. Making a connection. But are you going to do that too?
A moralising and provocative work of art. People have become really angry about it, some thought it was a monster, partly because of the large genitals of the thin ones, but it has also moved people to tears.
Ketelaar graduated in 2002. Before he moved to Drachten, he rented a stable in Zuidwolde. There he first opened his ‘Potzenmakerij’, of which he appointed himself director. There is always that talk about when something is art or not. I wanted to do what I wanted to do, but it didn’t have to be pointless. Potting is a serious joke. That’s what I call my works of art. It gives me freedom.”
His visual work already sold well during his studies. “That’s my luck, so I had pocket money.” It was luck that he needed, because setbacks kept coming. He had an accident in which he damaged his collarbone. He was also diagnosed with kidney disease. Berger’s disease. For a long time I was still too tired to walk to the tap for a glass of water. The disease can’t be cured, but oddly enough after a few years my kidneys worked almost completely properly again. It must have been something else.”
In 2005 he got his first assignment as a sculptor. He made The Traveller for the village hall of Weerdinge. This was followed by a collection of poems, many pots, exhibitions and more sculptures and works of art in public space, such as the ornamental fence around the royal lime tree in Leeuwarden. Last year he won the Rients Gratama Culture Prize, as if it were one of his pots, that was an image he had made himself.
Waiting for the disaster
Over the years, the state of the Netherlands grew into a nomadic image. It was to be seen in many places in the Netherlands but also in a museum in Bremen and at the New Island Festival in New York. He travelled to America with Joop Mulder, then Oerol director. Joop wanted the state to come to Oerol afterwards. But the image had already been seen in so many places, so I decided to make something new.” It was the prelude to Waiting for high tide. The image would be for the next edition of the festival on Terschelling, so that’s what got out of hand.
Waiting for high tide is essentially about looking for balance, he says. A billion people on this earth are suffering from ‘too much’, 800 million people are suffering from ‘too little’. Soon united on the dike, they look together towards the sea. As if everyone is waiting for the disaster. At sea it is ‘war’. We have to make sure that the plastic is removed from the oceans, but also that it doesn’t get in. And refugees drown at sea. How can you, as a human being, persevere in these circumstances and allow them to do so at the same time?”
Visually wrapping the message is the only way for me not to become discouraged.
Where he made The State to ‘tease’, Ketelaar mainly wants to ask questions with Waiting. When the women are standing next to each other, you can stand between them and look out for the sea with them. Maybe then thoughts will get going. You can also grab a hand of both ladies. Make a connection. But are you going to do that?”
Both The State and Waiting are the result of ‘permanent dissatisfaction’ with the world. We waste, we pollute. I also sometimes buy a T-shirt for three euros. In the back of your mind you know it can’t be made for that and yet you do it. We all maintain a system that exploits people. Our world needs rigorous steps. Visually wrapping the message is the only way for me to stay calm. In order not to become discouraged.”
But creating the two women turned out to be a huge challenge for Ketelaar. I work very inefficiently and therefore very slowly. That’s how I work more or less loose-handedly. Finding the right scale is not easy. A bunch of roots is made that way, but make a hand in proportion.” For the first three years, he often had to stop working. “Problems with my heart pump function.”
Sense of Place
Mulder left Oerol in 2017 for Sense of Place, a series of coastal projects that combine art and landscape management. The ladies’ destiny moved with that too.” But Sense of Place, conceived for LF2018, also got off the ground laboriously, partly due to permit problems. For the financing of Waiting I was dependent on it but at some point I had a rent arrears of 12,000 euros. If that exceeded 20,000 euros, I would have to hand in the state or be evicted from my workshop.”
A crowdfunding campaign that Ketelaar started with Sense of Place prevented that. And fortunately there were sponsors and friends who were willing to buy work from me if the need was high so that I could move forward. At the beginning of this year, the province helped out on the financial and procedural front. The intention and hope is that soon there will be a lease for my image comes to the municipality.
He has sometimes considered to give up. But the will to make the picture was always greater. Lots of people said to me that it was an unholy mission. Too ambitious, I could better focus on small, marketable work. But some found my plan genius. I’m proud of that, that’s what I live for. I have a difficult past with the church, but I also commit myself to believe that God believes in me. Sometimes I literally get down on my knees. Then I feel ‘something’, that also gives me strength and peace.”
World Cup irrigation
The introduction of both ladies to the public next week marks a new start for him. I’m going to miss them, but I’m also really looking forward to doing new things again. I already have plans for exhibitions, by the municipality of Achtkarspelen I was asked to make an image for the Entrepreneur Award. And in the end, we also have to: irrigate the World Cup in the Sahel, for example.”
You know, since I was a teenager, I’ve had some kind of death wish. I never minded it when the end came, even though that thought disappeared into the background when my five children arrived. Now, for the first time, I want to live a real life. A life lesson”, he says.
I’ve had sixty great years and I’m enjoying it more than ever. Your next hour is longer than your previous life. Waiting at high tide is my revenge, and I release a lot of my anger into the world with it. Declared completely incapacitated, I have become someone who earns his own income. I am considered to be full and where I can and may go now seemed unthinkable in the past. I have so many reasons to be grateful. Art has saved me.” (Source: www.frieschdagblad.nl)
