The shop windows are full of empty shops: The Wolnzach art and hobby group has decorated them with a wide variety of works of art.
The Kunst- und Hobbykreis Wolnzach has decorated the shop windows of empty shops in the market with works of art by its members, and according to the experience of chairwoman Gisela Brandl-Giesel, people actually stay longer in front of the shop window. In addition, there is the immediate effect for the association, which will celebrate a bigger anniversary in 2023: in 1983 the association, which today has 87 members, was entered in the association register after having existed more or less as a "wild" association for three years. In 2020, however, the club was unable to hold a festival for known reasons.
The members who exhibit here in the shop windows consistently use their opportunities to become known, to show their art and also to make the work of the association public. She indicated that the association was doing something from which everyone benefited: “Nobody looks in empty shop windows,” she said, referring to the friendly support from the market service in the town hall, who acted as mediator here. The association is pursuing a different direction than the initiators of the shop window exhibitions, for example in Moosburg and Nandlstadt: The artists here fill a gap, while in the other two municipalities a symbiosis of active business and art has been successfully attempted. What all three organizers have in common is the experience that they have found a wayto show art publicly under the conditions of the pandemic.
It is a format that can have a future, even if everyone is working on reducing the vacancy rate as quickly as possible. But the association even helps subliminally: in an attractive and lively shopping street, renting out is fundamentally easier. The association also has other public effects: As the chairwoman said, people go to institutions for the elderly to make art with the people there, maybe even to help them find a new hobby. There is also always a program with children, most recently with the summer holiday games. “We did that,” said the chairwoman, who is therefore quite satisfied.
Even if, according to the boss, who has been at the helm for 15 years, the club has no active youth group, it has a healthy age structure. From the age of 18 to retirement age, everything is represented, the spectrum of techniques ranges from “sophisticated handicrafts” to ink and oil painting. She described this diversity as the strength of the association: “Everyone does something different!” This calculation seems to work out: “We were able to win new members even in the Corona year,” she said happily in the conversation. However, the association could do a little more: During the conversation, it also emerged that there is still a lack of presence in social networks. Perhaps there is someone in the club who can fix this deficiency.
