Last week saw me at the premises of Kontakt, a weekly newspaper very popular in the Zaltbommel area. Went to talk about printing a Heilige Huisjes special as part of an exhibition I’m putting together. It was an ‘aha-erlebnis’ on a minor scale: we can actually afford to have the special printed! So we’re on!

Deadline for the HH exhibition plus newspaper special plus website plus reli-game is july next year, when the whole thing is to be presented in the Maartenskerk, the basilica that lords it over the Zaltbommel area. The young intern, the writer and me took this date and brute-forced it into an overall planning. And yes, it all seems do-able! We are now getting ready for the open-atelier route called Kunst, Kiezel and Klei – Art, Gravel and Clay – a celebration of art that lives inbetween two major rivers: Maas en Waal. Rivers that transport gravel and clay and so feed the land they border. Art feeds people the way rivers feed the land – a lofty sentiment, but true. Not to be pedantic: true for me. I went to art school to de-tox from thinking along straight lines all the time, and my life is very much richer for it. We will present the Heilige Huisjes project to the public for the first time – exiting! Hope to find new sponsors, too.

Below one of the info-graphics I am making for the exhibition. It shows the Bommelerwaard area, river Waal to the north, river Maas to the south, and on it the people we have interviewed so far. In all we’ll interview two dozen people about their religion and the way it informs the way they move through or construct the networks of society.