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Ellen

Posted on 10/10/2026 by Andrea Eimke

Forty-two Years of Friendship

The day before, I had taken a monumental step: moving out of my parents’ home and into a place of my own. Today was all about gratitude—a chance to host the friends who had helped me move and thank them with a home-cooked meal. There was just one problem. My new flat came with a gas stove, and no matter how much I fumbled with it, I couldn’t get it to light. As the clock ticked down, panic began to set in. Desperate, I decided to seek help next door.

Our fifth-floor apartment was split down the middle by a shared hallway that housed a shower on one side, a bathtub on the other, and a toilet nestled between them. On either side sat a separate kitchen and bedroom. The girl who used to live on the right side had recently moved out, leaving the remaining tenant to choose her new neighbor. She had chosen me.

I crossed the threshold and tapped softly on the frosted glass of her door. Moments later, a silhouette glided toward the glass. The door swung open, and there stood Ellen—completely, unapologetically naked.

I just froze there, eyes wide, utterly speechless. Ellen took one look at my stunned face and burst into laughter. “I don’t even have a gas stove—just two electric hot plates,” she chuckled. Taking me by the hand, she walked me back across the hall to my kitchen. Together, we finally coaxed a flame from the burner.

The food was still simmering on the stove as the first visitor rang the doorbell. That wild, unexpected afternoon encounter marked the beginning of a forty-two-year friendship—one that endured until the day God did us part.

*Janine McAullay-Bott, Train Engine, 2011, palm fronds, palm branch, kurrajong seed pod . Photo Josh Wells. Image supplied by MAC Inc.*

This morning, it felt as though her spirit were in the room with me. A photo popped up on my phone showing a tiny locomotive woven from twigs, and I knew instantly how much she would have adored it. She was an avid collector of toy trains and locomotives. Seeing it, I could almost picture her riding high atop that wooden train, her short hair tousled by the wind, laughing whole-heartedly—and, of course, stark naked.

I miss her dearly. She was the best friend I ever had.

The Pleasure of so many little Things

Posted on 06/10/2026 by Andrea Eimke

Tiny details of life in a world full of wonders

Rummaging through my drawer, a black cord keeps me from closing it. I tug on it, and tied to a carabiner hook covered in green rust, a black funnel-shaped object appears with a lens at its narrow end. Its Bakelite body is missing a small triangular chip where the lens screws in, and the lens itself is chipped too. “Darn it!” I hear my father say as he bends down to pick it up from the floor. It is his jeweler’s loupe, which he used to touch up tiny imperfections left by dust particles on photos using a fine brush dipped in black or white ink.

I remember a day during summer vacation. I had been given a microscope for my birthday. While running through my aunt’s garden, I scrapped my knee. I ran into the house, curious to look at my blood. It was teeming with round red particles that moved!

Better not look at the dust on my desk, just in case it moves too… I lift the loupe and try looking through it toward my window. I move it closer and farther from my eyes until the inverted, tiny image of my village appears. That is how it reduces. I flip it over. At two centimeters, it enlarges the minuscule print on an instruction manual. Closing one eye, I hold the loupe in the other. I can’t see a thing until the object is about ten centimeters away.

I look at my finger, magnificently magnified. I am amazed by the landscape of fingerprint ridges and grooves. Did you know that papillary ridges are dotted with countless tiny pitted specks? I get close to my dog’s blue eyes. Around the black pupil, I see feathery strokes of sky blue, encircled by a soft bluish-white ring laced with delicate veins.

I laugh quietly to myself. I have completely forgotten what I was looking for in the drawer. Standing here with my father’s loupe, I realize it doesn’t matter anymore. For a moment, I am not just looking through a lens; I am looking through my father’s eyes at a world full of wonders, sharing the exact curiosity that made him pause and pay attention to the tiniest details of life. Without knowing it, this was what I needed to find all along.

Camino de Ronda

Posted on 06/10/202606/10/2026 by Andrea Eimke

I walk with firm steps. I breathe deeply, absorbing the green exuberance as my feet tread on roots, fallen branches, and small pieces of calcified coral. In places, the ground is covered in soft green moss, slippery at times where cascading water has polished the surface. Downhill, downhill I go—carefully at first, but gaining speed until I am running. I feel the breeze of my own motion caressing my face.

This winding coastal path is my favorite section. My walk follows a map painted with scents: aromatic carpets of dry leaves, the perfume of pine, the fragrant offering of Mediterranean herbs, crisp green freshness, and the salty air from the Great Blue that embraces my town. I inhale deeply. Energy fills me. I feel calera.

The Sea is an Interior Monologue…

Posted on 06/10/202606/10/2026 by Andrea Eimke

…and sometimes, my inner monologue is like the sea. In its calm blue, mysteries hide much like in the human psyche. They are difficult to wrest away. Sometimes they emerge on their own from the relentless ebb and flow. The sea is different every day. It is masculine and feminine. There are days when she looks like silver playing with the sun. When whipped by the wind, he grows angry, green as a cat’s eyes. I lose myself in the freedom of its infinite horizon. In the soothing murmur of its waves, I find a whole spectrum of ideas and thoughts, as deep as the sea itself. It speaks to me. Or is it I who speak to myself, stirred by it?

This morning, while walking my dog along the seashore, I found a tuna stranded among the rocks. I will never know what happened to it. I had often watched the large fishing boats hauling giant tuna from their deep bellies, lifted out of the fish farm enclosures. They transfer them to trucks that take them to the auction. Perhaps this one managed to escape its prison and died of hunger because, once free, it did not know how to feed itself. It was used to a daily diet of sardines, for which it sometimes fought with the other captive fish and the seagulls. Maybe it envied the seagulls their freedom of flight and decided to escape. Perhaps it injured itself during its getaway, which ultimately cost it its life. Or perhaps its time had simply come.

When this town cast a spell on me and I decided to stay, I had the impression it would be forever. This morning, I saw myself in the tuna’s place. We have both reached the end of the journey. It has died. I feel resurrected. Living by the sea is a present. And dying will be one, too.

Visions at Dawn

Posted on 04/10/202604/10/2026 by Andrea Eimke

Come on, lazy bones, just get up! Go for a walk and enjoy the beauty of this new autumn day. In the dance of cool blue shadows, you can already sense winter drawing near. An aquamarine sky caresses its sapphire liquid lover, while in the distance, a lapis lazuli mountain range looks on, envying the beauty of their union. The blinding sun’s diamond reflections paint the palm fronds white. Let the still-mild air kiss the sleep from your eyes so you can witness the spectacle.

Because before you realize, darkness will descend. Like a black hole, the night will swallow the reddened dusk, wrapping you in the stillness of nothingness.

A few Loose Hours

Posted on 04/10/2026 by Andrea Eimke

A morning of strange Associatons

Last night‘s recordings sound as if I had been completely drunk. In reality, I had just been drunk on sleep.

This morning, however, waking up is a different story. My dog presses his face against mine and licks my nose—our sacred morning ritual. Inside my head, words are still fast asleep. “Coffee” is the very first one to clear the fog. I ask Alexa to turn on the news, needing to figure out what is happening in the world today. With a fresh mug and a yogurt in hand, I retreat straight back to bed.

On the radio, a reporter mentions that today is International Mother Language Day. The broadcast quickly shifts, making me wonder: is a new global conflict really looming over Europe? Then, the host introduces a word that describes me perfectly—tsundoku, the Japanese term for people who pile up unread books on their nightstands. Minutes later, a photo on Facebook catches my eye and lures me into the endless temptations of research.

But my drift is cut short. Wifi, my dog, urgently needs to pee and insists we get moving.

Outside, we cross paths with a couple wearing sunglasses. It is a windy, gray day; the sun is completely hidden. I can’t help but wonder: what exactly are they trying to hide?

Down by the water, chaos breaks out as a flock of seagulls relentlessly pursues one lucky bird that managed to catch a sardine. Only a solitary cormorant remains completely still, as if lost in meditation. Looking down, I notice the reflection of a railing stretching across the water. The stark black-and-white lines instantly evoke the striped uniforms of prisoners in Nazi concentration camps. What a curious association for a simple morning walk.

Later, I go out for lunch with an English friend. As I play last night’s recordings for her—now translating my dictation to English—she can’t help but laugh out loud.

And looking back at my day, I have to chuckle too. It is fascinating how the mind works in those quiet, unstructured hours between sleep and fully waking up. From the simple, chaotic greed of seagulls to the heavy weight of history reflected in a harbor railing, our brains constantly weave together a unique tapestry of the world. Perhaps that is the beauty of language, or simply learning to translate our thoughts: it forces us to stop, look closer, and find meaning—or a good laugh—in the most fleeting moments.

Creative Impasse

Posted on 04/10/202604/10/2026 by Andrea Eimke

Not much Science but some Fiction

A friend sent me the link to a Swiss painter’s website. I explore it with interest. I see oils, acrylics, three-dimensional works, and photographs.

Above all, her cyanotype prints captivate me. I submerge myself in a web of white lines: shiny filaments on a deep blue background. I pause to digest what I’ve seen. I look up toward the window in front of my desk, where a similar image surprises me. Above the whitewashed stone cubes of my town and the expanse of the cobalt sea extends, like a net of scars, a tangle of vapor trails that cross and lose themselves in the azure nothingness. Superimposed, an army of gray lenticular clouds evokes the silhouette of several UFOs.

To board one of them, I think, and fly to distant, ephemeral worlds—worlds that no longer exist anywhere but in my memory. To lose myself once again among the caresses of cotton fabrics and natural fibers. To let myself be carried away once more by the adventure of turning that delicate image into tangible matter. To create a space of dreams where reality vanishes on the threshold of the borderland, where the interstice transforms into a physical sensation of nothingness.

Ma, as the Japanese call it. For them, the space between things is not empty, but filled with energy: a force that moves you, inspires you, and lifts you up, like a flight inside a lenticular cloud. A possible interaction with the foreign, whether object, plant, animal, or human. Everything possesses a soul, a sensual promise, and deserves respect. The other, the unknown, is that which disquiets and at the same time fascinates; that which invites exploration. Is it not similar, perhaps, to being aboard that fictional alien ship?

I imagine black spheres descending on thin strings from that cloudy craft. As they draw near, the skeins unravel, turning into wavy filaments and shaping letters. They enter through my window and gather on my computer screen. As if holding hands, they weave sentences. I press a few keys to save this extraterrestrial text. What a rescue for a blocked writer!

A Visual Mind in a World of Words

Posted on 04/10/202606/10/2026 by Andrea Eimke

Just Thinking

Today, I realized that it is far easier for me to think and write in a foreign language than it is to speak it. I can’t help but wonder why that is! As an exercise for today, I decide to dictate my thoughts directly into my phone. What a hassle! It feels clumsy and difficult, but I regard it as a creative challenge. So, practice it is!

Do I actually think in words? I don’t believe I do. My thoughts take shape long before the words arrive, and the specific language I choose depends entirely on whatever linguistic environment I happen to be immersed in at the moment.

Language is powerful. The Gospel of John famously begins with, “In the beginning was the Word,” casting the word as the ultimate creative force. On the other hand, Ulysses S. Grant once wrote, “I think I am a verb.” I deeply resonate with that observation. I am always active—a doer, a feeler, a creator of my own world. I am an active piece of the universe around me, or at the very least, my actions ripple through it.

I also think in images, a trait I consider quite important. Being the daughter of a photographer, this visual instinct is part of my DNA. As an artist, I spent a long time expressing my feelings, observations, and ideas through multidimensional, tactile visual works. Learning to describe both my inner and outer worlds through written language is an entirely new journey for me.

Participating in the first ever International Biennial of Contemporary Lace in Gerona in 2025

Posted on 19/09/2026 by Andrea Eimke

I was invited to exhibit some lace pieces in the Conference’s exhibition. This challenge gave me the idea to finish a piece that had been waiting in a drawer for the right time to be shown.

“Between Wor(l)ds” is a play with words, which describes my liminal situation between languages. Words – connections between people – are audible and readable; they can be touched and they touch you. They fit together and make sense, yet sometimes they want to break out of the box. The work speaks to the desire to perceive cultural and linguistic conventions not as a limitation but as an enrichment.

As I had so liked the idea of making a dancer’s mask for the inauguration of Tercer Espai V. So I decided to make some more in a variety of colours and also send them to Gerona for display.

The Conference was a wonderful opportunity to meet with lace makers from all around the world. I loved talking to fellow artists and marveling at their art. It was here that I met the Bulgarian lace artist Bistra Pisancheva who invited me to exhibit Third Space VI in Sofia in March 2026. And my encounter with the organizer of the Textile Conference in Andorra led to my invitation to exhibit Tercer Espai VII as part of their biennial textile event in October 2026.

Tapa experiments in Tarascon

Posted on 20/08/2018 by Andrea Eimke

In September of 2017 the amazing book TAPA was launched in Paris. I was privileged to be one of the book’s many authors, and asked to write about the bark cloth on my former home island of Atiu (left). I was also invited to exhibit some of my works for the occasion (below a detail of my tapa-lace panel with Marquesan dance costumes in the background).

During the exhibition I met French artist and art restorer Marion Dumaine. Marion exhibited lengths of Tongan tapa beautifully decorated with natural pigments and gold leaf. Being both interested in barkcloth, the idea arose to meet in August 2018 and hold an experimental workshop. My German girlfriend Christel Weingart, felt artist, painter and published author, who had used barkcloth in a sculptural way many years ago, would also join us. Raymond and Colette Cristini offered us free of charge their lovely summer house in Tarascon sur Ariège (France) for our experiments. Our first interest was to check if there were any suitable plants growing in Europe whose inner bark could be successfully beaten into usable sheets. Marion’s cousin had had to cut down a fig tree, ficus carica, one of the many fig species and thus distantly related to the plant family from which tapa is being made in the South Pacific islands and other areas. They had kept some branches for us to explore.

We boiled these in water for three hours (left: Christel checking on the branches) and spent an entire day shaving off the outer bark. The bast could be removed and smelled, felt and looked just like that of the Banyan roots I had worked with in the Cook Islands. We fermented it for a day, as I had done on Atiu, to make beating of the rather coarse bark easier.

However when beating it, it did not stay in one piece, but dissolved into bundles of tangled fibres. So we learned our first lesson: not all fig bast is suitable for tapa making.

Marion brought some Philodendron roots from her giant plant at home to try out. It was a fiddly enterprise to shave off the outer bark. The best way of removing the inner wooden core was to just beat the root flat. When fresh, it had beautiful rusty and pink colours, however these dried into beige and brown once dry.

I took some blueprinted tapa with me which I wanted to felt into a freshly beaten length of tapa. Colette, our hostess, had brought us bundles of dried Broussonetia papyrifera (Paper Mulberry) bark from her home island of Futuna. We were grateful that Michel Charleux, the editor of the TAPA book, let us have the Marquesan-style anvil which had served for tapa demonstrations during the Paris book launch exhibition. Once the bast was beaten thin, I removed some slivers from the cyan-dyed tapa pieces and beat them into the white tapa. It worked wonderfully.

Encouraged by Marion’s experiments with the Philodendron roots, I decided to experiment with mauve coloured Rose of Sharon petals. The delicate upper parts were easy to felt into the bast, the thicker maroon centers not so well. However in the end, most of the petals had merged with the bark.

We decided to beat all strips of bark which we had already soaked in water. Both Marion and I were interested in achieving a lacy effect (left) for use in future artworks .

Meanwhile Christel had been using pieces of tapa to fashion some delightful three dimensional artifacts. I had seen Christel’s tapa bowls when I first met her in 2003 and had been keen to learn from her how to make them.

Over a ceramic bowl, with the help of cling film, water and cellulose glue she formed delicate vessels (left), decorated with spirals and some of the fig bast fibres from our previous experiment (right). They were especially impressive when seen in their delicate beauty against the light and blue sky of Tarascon’s summer.This was my chance and now I knew what I wanted to do with the cyan-dyed tapa pieces.

The blue and white patterns reminded of Delftware. After the first bowl I became more adventurous. I discovered that the pieces were double-layered and that using both layers made the bowl too opaque for what I wanted to achieve. I also used the inner, plain layer and adorned it with the remnants of the previous bowl.

Now, back in Terrassa, the three bowls I made in this enjoyable experimental workshop adorn my book shelf. They may become part of an exhibition I am hoping to have some day…