Inspiration from a "wonderful spot on earth"

Created: 08/19/2022, 07:02

By: Andrea Graepel

Gabriele Köbler (right) spends three days modeling her clay figure, which will later be cast in concrete.

Markéta Váradiová and Tim Weigelt, on the other hand, work with wood.

© Andrea Jaksch

Kick-off for the 20th Art and Beer Symposium on the Holy Mountain in Andechs.

Andechs

– Gabriele Köbler from Haßloch takes part in an art symposium for the first time.

Also because the well-known name Andechs caught her eye when she was advertised, after all, as a citizen of the Starnberg partner district, she knows the Andechs beer festival in Haßloch very well.

That's why she swapped her quiet studio for a week for the busy sculpture park on the Holy Mountain to take part in the 20th Art and Beer Symposium.

Hubert Huber from Fürstenzell helped found the symposium 20 years ago.

He still manages it to this day, enjoys coming to Andechs and is always happy.

"Andechs inspires," he says.

He himself has been an artist for 40 years.

And even after 20 years, he finds "this wonderful piece of earth" uniquely beautiful.

In addition to Gabriele Köbler, Markéta Váradiová from the Czech Republic and Tim Weigelt from Jena were selected from 38 applications this year.

Unlike Köbler, who casts busts in concrete, the other two sculptors work with chainsaws and drills on logs.

Both have symposium experience and love the exchange with the many visitors who stop curiously on the way up the mountain.

Weigelt (45) enthuses that "everything was done" when he came.

The wood was ready, the tent was in place, he just had to start working on his “tap”, on which he would like to show off the pun until the end of the symposium next Wednesday.

Markéta Váradiová is at work with beer foam, which actually seems to foam up with the first drill holes in the trunk.

The 48-year-old is not only a performing artist, she also teaches at the university.

"I wouldn't be able to make a living from it otherwise," she admits.

She usually attends two to three symposia a year, after Corona there were already six this year.

"That's extreme," she says herself, feeling a bit like a monkey in the zoo.

"But that's part of the game." In this "wonderful place" anyway.

"You have to like it," such a symposium, says Weigelt.

As a Haßlocherin, Gabriele Köbler had made the venue “adventurous”.

But the 59-year-old already knows on the first day that this first symposium will probably also be her last.

She prefers the quiet of her studio.

“My material is not necessarily suitable either.

But I'm going to pull it off now.” With her work, the figures made of concrete, she has already made a name for herself and is a sought-after artist.

Busts are cast in concrete, modeled from clay, which she uses over and over again.

Sometimes it's Frida Kahlo, sometimes a full-body cast, like a seated swimmer that she created.

Most of them are busts - like the "Beer Queen" that is now being created on the sculpture park in Andechs.

Visitors can look over the artists' shoulders at work until Wednesday, August 24, daily from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. and from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m.

The works of art, like all other sculptures, are made available for exhibition on the meadow and in the municipal area for at least two years after their completion.