Mieke Van Grinsven is Dutch and she has been living in Arusha, Tanzania with her husband, since 1994. After art studies in the Netherlands, she spent many years working with leather. She then decided she needed to explore other forms...
Read MoreMieke Van Grinsven is Dutch and she has been living in Arusha, Tanzania with her husband, since 1994. After art studies in the Netherlands, she spent many years working with leather. She then decided she needed to explore other forms of expression, “something more organic, less structured”. So she flew to Zimbabwe to learn how to carve stones.
Since then, she has been creating stone sculptures in her garden, by the shade of the fever trees. The two kinds of stones she works with, Opale and Serpentine, both come from Zimbabwe.
“I work with stones and I connect with the energy compressed in it. There is something very ancient in Africa, and when I am here, in the middle of these acacia trees, I have the feeling this medium allows me to connect with this ancient energy. First, I created faces, then I focused on bodies and finally I went to abstraction. Now I am focusing on hanging sculptures. I have added a new dimension: the wind. My sculptures flow from the Earth to the universe. It’s like yoga, when you feel that it’s flowing from the Earth into your spine. No matter how loud the environment can become, nothing can disturb this energy”.
“The sculptures catch that moment between Heaven and Earth, which we have been given to live our lives”.
