Amo's Art: June 2012

93 YEAR OLD MAKES COLLAGES DAILY

"IT CREATES ITSELF"

Vera Meyer Ricard, who lives in Huizen, Holland is 94 years old. Daily she works on her collages. She has made more than a hundred of them. She doesn't quite remember how she got the idea for making collages. "Last year I spent more than four months in the hospital, but I was never bored. I drew pictures and did crossword puzzles and read. When I came home on July 13 I kept drawing and then all of a sudden I thought of those collages. I make pictures of animals and people. I cut out all kinds of pictures from catalogs and magazines and from that a figure forms. I make faces from all kinds of things. It was my profession: graphic arts.", she says.
"I went to the Nieuwe Kunstschool. It wasn't an accredited school, you paid your teachers themselves. My teacher was Hajo Rose. He was a pupil of Kandinsky." Vera tells.
Vera was born in Hamburg, Germany. Then when she was five she moved to Holland because her father did a lot of business in Holland. "I have always designed and invented things" She met her husband in the beginning of the war in Amsterdam at his studio where she did her internship. "We worked together and got married after the war. We had a Graphic Design business on the Nieuwezijds Voorburgwal. When Nazis came I was not able to work because I am Jewish and I was hidden by my husband during the war. He had a hiding place made in his house. He himself was half Jewish. In Germany he was seen as Jewish, but not here in Holland. The fact that he was German made it easier for him. So he didn't have to go into hiding himself. My husband had a second room built behind a wall and in front of the wall was a bookcase through which you could enter the room.. I didn't spend a lot of time there. Just when acquaintances visited that my husband didn't trust I hid in there. But I heard their jokes and it was very hard to keep quiet and not to laugh. What happened to me during the war I wrote down with a type writer. I was hidden perhaps just a few hundred meters from where Anne Frank was hidden, but the problem was that too many people knew of her hiding place. We didn't tell anyone about our hiding place. My husband was very careful. He went through a lot in Germany already. We had another person, a writer, hiding with us.
We got married because the immigration police recommended it. My husband was still German and had to check in with immigration. His parents still weren't allowed to visit Holland at that time. That's why we wanted to postpone the wedding a bit. But the the official at immigration said: "why don't you get married?" So we did. I survived the war, but the rest of my family didn't come back. My sister went voluntarily. She had a special stamp and thought she could get through with that.

Getting Married
"If you see now how fancy some weddings are... We got married in 1946. I wore an old suit of my mother's. Our dinner was a fat eel, that we were able to acquire somewhere and the bouquet was a small bunch of roses, that we received from an acquaintance." remembers Vera very well.
After the war the couple continued with their graphic design business. But times were hard for these self employed. Vera: "Sometimes my husband worked a whole night through on one postcard and then he had to wait and see if the client accepted it, but also he had to wait and see when the client would pay"
They got two children: Winnie and Tanja. Because her husband wanted to live in the country they moved to Blaricum in 1951 where they lived and worked. Her husband was 10 years older and when he became sick she took care of him until he passed away in 1988. Later she moved to the Gooierserf in Huizen. "I like it here" she says. Daughter Tanja lives in the US and posts the collages on a blog and shares them on Facebook.

Collages
Every day Vera spends half her day working on her collages. She also makes cards at least two times a week. New ideas just come to her. "People ask me: What are you going to make? I answer: It makes itself" She calls her creations: Vera's crazy creatures. As a child she was already creative and drew pictures often. At first she made collages from pictures from jewelry catalogs, but slowly she started using other magazines. She signs every collage. " I want to show people that even when you are old, sick and/or handicapped that you can still do things, like making collages. I visit the Marke every week. A group where visual handicapped people get together and there I continue with my collages. I make collages because it keeps me busy; it gives you the feeling of purpose. Because I can't go shopping anymore I order clothes from catalogs and these catalogs I also use for my collages. I cut things out that I think will inspire me. I'd like to give the pictures away for charity" she says. They are happy pictures that Vera makes. On the backside she writes a text that has to do with the picture. Often she is inspired by children's songs. From the pictures you can see that she is a real animal lover. A cat walks around in her house, but she also loves dogs. In the past Vera used to write for a dog magazine. In her living room some of her larger collages are displayed on the wall. In the hallway hangs some of her husbands work.
So, you once again see, who is born creative never looses it.

Writtten by S. Oostwouder
Translated by Tanja Swanson -Meyer Ricard