At the shaper and molder Quirin Bäumler
It is a sunny autumn day and we are looking for our destination on the extensive area of the Weddinger Uferhallen. We still have to climb a steep staircase (which makes our knees a little weak) before Quirin Bäumler welcomes us to his residential studio. It is teeming with faces, hands, large and small sculptures and sculptures, because Quirin is a sculptor; but he also draws a lot. In addition to paper and pencil, he prefers to work with plaster, clay and epoxy resin, a type of plastic.
Normally the artist shows his works in galleries in Berlin and all over Germany, so he is a bit nervous to show them now in his studio or living room. That reassures us, because we are also a bit shy today. After we’ve cleared that up and all gathered some courage, the questions bubble out of us: Do you have kids? Why do you make art? What’s your favorite work of art and what color do you like best?
Quirin tells us about his three – now grown-up – children and that he has always drawn, even as a student. As proof, he shows his old biology notebooks, which are full of doodles. He has always been able to concentrate and listen much better when he draws or does something with his hands – but the teachers didn’t want to see that. (We feel the same way, both in terms of concentration and teacher understanding!) His favorite sculpture is “John the Baptist” by Donatello, a 15th century sculptor, and the color blue, which often accompanies him (his shirt is blue and so is his car), is actually not his favorite color at all. He adds that color is nevertheless important in his work - precisely because he hardly ever uses any. When he does use some, it's something very special and a conscious decision. Mostly he leaves his sculptures in their natural colors: grayish-white, reddish-brown, earth-colored.
And he shows us now to reveal how he works. You could also say he introduces us to his family, because of the many faces, some are relatives – his late father and uncle are there, his mother, his nephew as a baby (he’s now over 30) and even an imprint of Quirin’s own face. He shows us the hand of his then 10-year-old niece and we compare it to our 9-year-old hands. On the surface, you can see every wrinkle exactly, the texture of the skin, just everything – like a copy. But how is it done so faithfully? The artist takes impressions of the faces or body parts with plaster or alginate (a material obtained from algae) and then fills the resulting empty form with another filler, for example plaster or clay. However, one can also become a molder oneself instead of just taking the mold: Quirin once dug a hole in a large mountain of clay (took away material) and modeled two fish with his hands without any pattern or drawing. Then he poured plastic over the outside of the mountain with the “fish valleys” and when that solidified, he took the clay out of the inside... that’s why the plastic sculpture looks completely different from the inside than it does from the outside.
Quirin knows a lot about giving and taking shape and for the last 2 years he has been running the workshop for shape, plaster, plastic, 3D scanning of the bbk (which stands for Bundesverband Bildender Künstler und Künstlerinnen). Here he supports other artists* with his (material) knowledge and can also work on his own projects. What luck that the workshops are a stone’s throw away from the Uferhallen and Quirin takes us with him.
He leads us through the plaster, wood, metal and stone workshop and we can't stop being amazed: a giant block of marble is being shaped with an electric chisel, a circular saw is cutting wood at lightning speed and the artist Jay Gard (whom we already know from an earlier Ephra unterwegs round) is welding a large metal sculpture. One of us enthusiastically explains over the noise that it was his big dream to one day go into a workshop. And it has just been fulfilled for him!
In the plaster hall, Quirin has prepared clay for us, where we can model something in it and then pour it out with plaster. Now we know, fortunately, that everything in the clay points outward, in the plaster cast later points inward, and writing must be mirror-inverted so that it can be read on the plaster cast. We get right to work. Unfortunately, the plaster takes too long to dry, but Quirin promises to deliver our work to school in his blue car. We are already quite excited, but even without having seen the result, we know: The day was a complete success!
