Maria meets me at the train station entrance. Her fiery magenta hair gleams through the glass window.
“I forgot how many tourists there are this time of year!” She looks overwhelmed by the nonstop stream of backpackers and families rolling dark suitcases over uneven stone.
We walk through the Jordaan, passed women wearing huge sunglasses, drinking white wine along the canals. The sun is hot and the city air dense with summer celebration.
Amsterdams Grafisch Ateliers is at the end of Laurierstraat, a thin passageway lined with quaint apartments and corner-side bars. The organization spans the block in a school building stretching from Prinsengracht. A clutter of rusty black bikes rest alongside green ivy that scales up red brick. My suitcase drops from my tired arm and I ring the bell. A woman with curly brown hair and perfect-circle spectacles greets me.
“Hallo?” Print chemicals hang in the air of the entrance hall.
“Hello, I am here to see Kristien. I am the resident artist?” I pose this as a question, without reason.
“Uhh, moment.” The woman runs up a winding metal staircase and returns, motioning for me to follow.
The director, Kristien models an olive green skirt, sleek side-zippered black top, and short sandy blonde hair set freely across her slim face. She has tan, sun-stroked skin and a disarming manner. She walks me to the small resident room, which consists of a bed, table, small refrigerator and empty bookshelves. At the end of the room, glass doors open up to a long garden where mint, chives and thyme grow. The bathroom and shower are down a hall, lined with workstation sinks upon which inks and roller brushes rest. Just outside my thin wing is the large, open printing studio. Member artists share the space, filled with print-exposure units, old iron print presses, drying racks and worktables. The smell of grass flows through the open window to blend with an ink chemical cloud.
Kristien is working hard to keep AGA afloat. She directs the space, which is at the whim of the government’s recent cuts in the arts. Karen Anthony, a quick-paced artist and volunteer from Manchester devotes extra time to helping maintain the center.
“I don’t want AGA to disappear. I am a printmaker and want to keep my facilities here in Amsterdam to work!” She divulges her insight over strong lattes at a nearby artist’s café. Black expressions blotch along the long white wall.
“AGA is in a hard place, like all other artist centers in Holland. They may not receive the amount of funding that they did in the past. Here in Holland, we don’t have private funders the way you do in the States. We have a lot of taxes and are dependent on our government services. This has included the arts sector, until now.”
She takes a sip of foamy milk coffee.
“Holland’s government is conservative – it’s vastly different than it was before. My husband and I have been traveling here for the past twelve years. We see how it’s changed. People are being fed anti-immigrant, awful propaganda. Friends of mine make astonishing comments – people I have known for years! I can’t believe some of the stuff I hear.”
At night the streets clutter with tourists and scarved cyclists, racing through blocks surrounded by clock towers. English resounds from checkered cheese shops and dark wine bars where candle light flickers through high windows. I eat spicy peanut stew and watch a boy with thick dreads stumble by.
I wake with heavy eyes in a dark room. After three alarm rings I tumble from the bed and open the curtain. Green ivy climbs up the gardens brick wall gate. The scene looks like a photo-realist painting pasted to the window.
“Hello!”
A woman with thick, grey pigtail braids bursts into the bathroom.
“Ugh, hello?” I utter with tired effort.
“I am Afra!” She extends her hands. “Wonderful to meet you!”
Afra wears a red sweater and blue jeans. Tight wrinkles pencil-line her childlike face on which spreads a jovial smile. She wears the same red sweater and blue jeans the following day.
“You just woke?” She increases the tone on the final note.
“Ugh, yah.”
“Welcome! I just have to pee.” She races by me toward the women’s stall.
Each morning I walk past print sinks toward the communal bathroom. Light slides through the huge windows. Ink hangs like a veil along the way. Text block prints display along the walls. At night Kristien and a platinum-blonde-haired woman paint the studio loft space.
“We need to improve the space and we have no money – so we are working here tonight.” They eat white beans and green salad in the garden and then work, sanding the walls in preparation for a new coat of white.
“We are in trouble in the Arts here in Holland,” Kristien explains later in the evening while cleaning the night’s work.
“Are you and artist yourself?” I ask.
“No, no, I am a manager, trained in administration and directing.”
Kristien is posed with an interesting challenge – keep the center alive. Like numerous arts organizations, AGA faces financial trouble and the threat of closure. Their rent has been raised by 70% over the past few years.
“In Holland we have such high taxes,” she explains, “so everyone is used to government services to provide necessities and this includes the arts. We are not accustomed to support from private businesses. It is very different from in the U.S. I support high taxes, but don’t want to see our arts resources go away.”
“It seems like the private sector will have to start giving to the arts, sponsoring, donating and buying more.”
“Yeah, well, that will take time. It will be gradual. We don’t think that way here.”
Everyone discusses the crisis. I meet designers and artists employed by operas and museums. Institutions will lose support, jobs will disappear across the artistic community. Everyone is worried about the coming year.
The following night I meet with Lydia, an accomplished Dutch artist who has taught at University, traveled throughout the world with her successful commercial gallery and worked as a resident artist and prestigious institutions, including P.S.1 in New York.
“There is no work.”
Brilliant red lipstick paints across her lips below ruby-rimmed glasses. A neon pink raincoat cover her button-down blouse decorated in bright orange lines. The lipstick sinks into slight wrinkles mapping her long face. She weaves her long fingers beneath her chin and sips mint tea.
“This government has turned our society against the arts. They are trying to somehow make the arts sound wrong – a waste of money for a meaningless practice. Holland is becoming even more of a practical, service country. Everyone wants to be a banker and make money. Arts and culture are portrayed as a societal weight. We will lose our intellectuals and become like robots.”
A Dutch couple sits at our long table, on the other side of a metal partition where a small green plant sprouts. The man wears a khaki jacket and drinks endless glasses of PALM beer. The sky turns black at ten and the man smokes a bitter smelling pipe.
Lydia studied art in Rotterdam after getting a degree as a medical technician. She supported herself through art school, working in cardiac research.
“What brought you to Amsterdam?”
“A man.” She smiles.
“Where do you live?”
“On a house boat at the edge of the city.”
“Really?”
“Yah-”
“Is it like a real home, or more like a boat?”
“It’s more like a boat.”
“Wow, is he an artist as well?”
“He’s a musician. He plays with orchestras – travels to China a lot.”
“That sounds great.”
“Yah, it’s different here than in Rotterdam. It’s a good base.”
Her thick red lips bend upward into a smile. She takes a sip of mint tea. A neat red imprint remains on the glass rim.
