Where I’m From

When people think The Netherlands they often think Dutch Design and how amazing it must have been to grow up amongst all of this design history. But I, like many of my peers, grew up unconnected to the design world in the Netherlands and Europe. My introduction to culture was through comics like Donald Duck, Storm (by Don Lawrence), and Suske en Wiske. Reader’s Digest books that my grandparents had and Saturday morning cartoons like Ulysses 31 and Batman the Animated Series. All the while working odd jobs, from newspaper delivery, harvesting tomatoes and roses in Dutch greenhouses, to working as a librarian at the Haas Art’s Library at Yale. Growing up seeing art outside of the academic context I still often don’t know the names of artists or designers and often have to look them up even though I remember the piece, its historym, and the context.

I grew up in Maassluis in The Netherlands a small’ish town close to Rotterdam where the only museum was a fishery museum. In a family descendant from farmers, fishers and laborers whose only touchpoints of culture were the churches, popular and religious music, and books. Nothing to sneeze at, but despite showing an early interest in art and drawing my family wasn’t really able to show me the way to art. It wasn’t until the final year of high school that it dawned on me that there is such a thing as art school. Since then I’ve been pulling at strings and finding my own way in the world of art and culture.