Uta Neumann & Barbara Collé

Uta Neumann & Barbara Collé – Week One – this story started with a gift
Jun 12, 2022

A gift from us, Uta Neumann and Barbara Collé, to the team of Sasso Residency. And from that gift came another: an invitation to spend a month here as artists in residence. And now that we are here, more than five months after the first gift, we notice that the gift has many more sides to discover. We are staying here together with Susanne Waeckerlin and Tonjaschja Adler. It is so very exciting to find our way and our work together this upcoming month.

The gift we made for Sasso was an Artist Book printed with Riso: ‘Von Farben, die in Steinen wohnen’.

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the gift | ARTIST BOOK

Von Farben,
die in Steinen wohnen.

This book tells the story of two artists: one completely absorbed in the experience of colours and the other deeply captivated by the mysterious beauty of stones. From the moment they met they walked daily through the forest they called ‘the caramel woods’, and while walking kept pointing out colours and placing stones in each other’s hands. ‘Do you see this? Do you feel that?’

Von Farben, die in Steinen wohnen
Artist Book
No.1 | Teal – Orange – Grey
Edition of 3.
Uta Neumann and Barbara Collé, 2022.
24 Riso prints printed by Knust at AGA LAB Amsterdam.

This is the first publication we made together. To our great surprise, the beauty of a stone coincided with the beauty of colours. And now, when we go through the publication, we whisper questioningly: does the stone show the colours, or do the colours show the stone?

Preliminary

Last week we stayed in the Alpenhof panorama lodge. We were there to visit the lavish, incredible Andreas Züst library to prepare this residency at Sasso.

ONE WEEK RESIDENCY AT

Bibliothek Andreas Züst.

We went like flying foxes through the narrow corridors and caves of the library, soaring through the insane treasures of books we found along the way.

What connection can we find between rainbows, rituals, our consciousness, dragons, caves and the dawn, was the question that kept finding us a new book, a new title, a new quote.

A slumbering Dragon

It really was an insanely beautiful tour through Andreas Züst’s library and we found some wonderful understated treasures that we have now brought back to Sasso to continue twirling, walking around and looking at from different angles and from there create a new work and perhaps find the slumbering dragon here… Perhaps just below the surface of the lake? Perhaps up here against the hill between all the tones of green? Last night we dreamed about a waterfall nearby, we can’t wait to go and look for that. For where there is water there are dragon snakes, rainbows and shelters.

To be continued…

Uta Neumann:
Website: http://uta-neumann.de/
Instagram: @u_neu_mann

Barbara Collé
Website: https://www.barbaracolle.nl/
Instagram: @bar.bara.colle

Entweben des Regenbogens.

Uta Neumann & Barbara Collé – Story 2 Summer Solstice –
Jun 21, 2022

Summer Solstice, The day of the almost infinite light (and colour)

During the day with the almost infinite light, June 21 – the longest day of the year, we are staying at Sasso. We invited our fellow artists from the house to celebrate the light. Because when we celebrate light we also celebrate colour, we prepared a special colour meditation.

It was such a special and beautiful experience. We all saw different choreographies of colours, shapes and movements. The colours clouded, pulsated, crowded around each other or just seemed to evaporate into an infinite distance.

The colour meditation that we chose for this day is based on a well-known European visual meditation and consists of the colours blue and red in a graphic pattern.

Uta and I (Barbara) have continued with the meditation and are doing it almost daily, also extending the time. So not only does the light of the longest days shine on our time in Sasso, but also the light of this colour meditation colours our time here.

But for next week we have a different plan. That is also based on light, but more fiery that goes together with the darkest dark.

Until then!

Uta Neumann:
Website: http://uta-neumann.de/
Instagram: @u_neu_mann

Barbara Collé
Website: https://www.barbaracolle.nl/
Instagram: @bar.bara.colle

Colour Meditation

Together with Susan Waeckerlin, Tonjaschja Adler and Kathleen Wächter & Chess. At Casa Sasso on June 21, 2022.

Uta Neumann & Barbara Collé – Story 4 – Sasso is a Wishing Stone
Jul 7, 2022

Sasso means stone. We didn’t know that when we sent in our book. In our artist book, we printed 24 images of a stone. It wasn’t until four weeks after we were invited that someone told us; ‘A lot is called Sasso in that area, because that is Italian for stone.’

Uta has been accompanied by stones for years, they were new to Barbara, but then again they were not.

We made imprints of stones with clay, we swam with stones in the icy waterfall, we filmed the light captured by stones.

We went to Zürich to see Sigmar Polke’s Kirchenfenster in the Grossmünster, stained glass patterns made of stones. And walked into the healing Grotto Emma Kunz found.

Sasso is a wishing stone.

The last weeks we turned over every Sasso and in the end it happend that we could get blood from a stone. Dragon blood, beautiful red oxygenated blood from a dragon stone.

After this beautiful precious period at Casa Sasso together with the artists Tonjaschja Adler and Susan Waeckerlin (our true Sassi Dragon Sisters) we wallow on like rolling stones polished by water.

Thank you dear people of Sasso’s, we won’t forget this time and place!

Uta Neumann:
Website: http://uta-neumann.de/
Instagram: @u_neu_mann

Barbara Collé
Website: https://www.barbaracolle.nl/
Instagram: @bar.bara.colle

Sasso’s Golden Combinations – Story 3 – How we match together like Lime & Coconut or Watermelon & Chili
Jul 2, 2022

‘How lucky that the people of Sasso have put us together in this time slot of the artist residency.’ ‘How would the Sasso’s have chosen to put us together? It’s so spot on!’ 

These are statements that the four of us, Tonjaschja, Susan, Uta and Barbara have said to each other several times from the moment we walked into Sasso. And we repeated it while cooking together, drinking coffee in the ‘stone garden’, while working downstairs in our atelier or during on of our Brocki-tours.

‘What a fantastic match and how special that we click so well, and that we inspire each other in this way.’

Later, when I scrolled through this Sasso blog, I noticed that artists who were here before us, this year, and the years before, had these exact same thoughts. The above statements have also been literally thought, felt, lived (and communicated in this blog) by previous residents of Casa Sasso.

Still, we don’t know how the Sasso-people make their choices, how they put together such right combinations. But the outcome, the energy, the happiness, the beautiful full moments, the shared experiences, the continuous laughter that fills Sasso all the time, we know these to our very fiber.

Thank you dear Sasso community! Thank you for your care and lucky, golden hand.

With love,
Uta Neumann, Barbara Collé, Tonjaschja Adler and Susan Waeckerlin