Journey abroad gives artist new inspiration

For Dutch graphic artist Harmen Liemburg, a residency at Northeastern serves as a hub for one of his most engaging subjects yet: America

Text: Chris Brook

03/15/2006

With scraps of cut-up paper littering the floor and several studio lamps illuminating the room, Harmen Liemburg hunches over a Formica worktable. His office, smelling of freshly brewed coffee, is a modestly-sized nook adjoined to the Mac lab on the fourth floor of Ryder Hall. There's a large computer monitor, stacks of books and a black fur-lined parka slung over a desk chair in the corner. The room is small, but he says it's all the space he needs.

On this recent Tuesday night, Liemburg, dressed in a denim cowboy shirt, olive slacks and a Northeastern lanyard draped around his neck, is cutting fine lines into paper. Eyes focused, he is meticulously slicing the heavy black construction paper into letters, branches, owls and familiar icons from the Boston skyline. These pieces, once precisely chopped up, intricately pieced together and mounted on the proper machinery will ultimately form a future project or silkscreen poster. After paper cutting, mounting them on film, and letting them dry overnight, the process can take weeks to complete.

Liemburg's last project, "Offshore (A Tip Of The Liemberg...)" was influenced by the familiar designs that Liemburg discovered in day-to-day life. For example, the knotted blue rope around the edge of the poster was found on a bag of frozen cod from the Shaw's freezer section. Elsewhere, Liemburg found the pop-art image of a girl from a bag of potato chips, Utz. He also found photos of a sign with seagulls on it he once photographed in San Francisco. He integrated all the elements into various screen prints. Like many artists, Liemburg claims that his art is a result of his experiences. Liemburg takes that idea one step further. By putting found objects directly into his art, he forms a visual cacophony of his diverse experiences. They are unified only by his inquiring mind. "I recently watched a TV miniseries called 'Into the West,' an epic historical drama with a lot of [artistic] qualities," he said. "And in L.A., I visited the great Western Heritage Museum … I'm sure echoes of that will be found in my new work."

Some of Liemburg's recent work revolves around his love for the sea. Art aficionados can notice squids, whales, jellyfish and lobster embedded in some of his more recent pieces. Liemburg admits he has an admiration for old sea novels like "Moby Dick" and "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea," along with reading books on the Eastern whaling industry. Liemburg is also fascinated with marine biologist Richard Ellis and the ancient work of Japanese artist/painter Katsushika Hokusai, perhaps best known for his wood-cut print "In the Hollow of a Wave off the Coast at Kanagawa," he said. Liemburg is the first artist to be invited as part of the visual arts department's newly-created artist-in-residence program, which was started in hopes to gain perspective on art through people with different heritages, different ways of living and different ways of thinking and methods of working.

Born and raised in the Netherlands, Liemburg is a 39-year-old graphic designer and printmaker based out of Amsterdam. Chosen from a pool of respected applicants last fall to spend this spring as an artist-in-residence in Northeastern's Visual Arts Department, Liemburg is teaching three classes at Northeastern: Typography II, Graphic Design II and Topics in Studio Art. The academics are an addition to his constant creativity. He said he is always designing screen-printed posters for the visual arts department, designing a stamp for the Dutch Postal Service and preparing a collection of brand new material to be unveiled this August at the Boston Center for the Arts' Mills Gallery. On top of these projects, Liemburg is still grappling to find time to explore Boston and New England. "The reason we wanted to bring in these people was to introduce students to graphic design on an international scale," said Kali Nikitas, chair for the visual arts department. "[We wanted to] bring in a full-time practitioner and infuse experience." The department has been trying to get its annual spring break trips to coincide with the artist in residence program. Last year, students visited Holland and, in turn, have Liemburg as a professor this year. This semester, students are visiting the European capitals of Budapest, Hungary, and Prague, Czech Republic. By next January, the department hopes to find an artist from one of those countries to teach at Northeastern. Linda Swaap, another Netherlands-based designer, will even display one to three pieces of work at Northeastern during the Summer I semester to continue the transatlantic connection.

Liemburg's current stay in Boston, which began January 3, marks his fifth time in the United States. In 1997, Liemburg participated in an exchange program with Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Va. Later that year, he interned with a New York City Web design company, Oven Digital. In 2000, he traveled across the Southwest and in 2003 he taught a workshop at California Institute for the Arts (CalArts) in Valencia, Calif. While Liemburg will teach his classes here until the end of April, his visa extends until the end of August. He plans to make the most out of his stay in North America until he must return to Amsterdam.

Influenced by the art on record covers from mid-'80s alternative rock bands like the Pixies, Cocteau Twins, Throwing Muses and New Order, Liemburg first wanted to design graphic art for the rock world. Once enrolled in Utrecht University in the Netherlands, Liemburg's area of concentration shifted to cartography, the study of maps, but the allure of the art world drew near. It wasn't long before the Dutch artist fell in love with the art of silk-screening under the guidance of mentor Kees Maas. From 1999 to 2002, Liemburg paired up with graphic designer Richard Niessen to form the Golden Masters design team, an ambitious outfit which toyed with borders, color, lines and texture to create intricate art. The duo sent out a number of bulk mailings of their silk-screening works, in hopes to spread the word about their partnership.

Being obsessed with line quality and details, Liemburg still flirts with cartography in his everyday work. By collecting elements and creating an overview before he starts his work. In a way, his posters are personal maps, he said. "It's a very slow process: from geography to cartography to graphic design to ever more autonomous projects and authorship," he said. While he has been inundated with work this semester, Liemburg hopes he'll be able to have more free time to dig through his archives of design, and, in turn, create some new art for the remainder of his time here. His submission to last year's International Poster and Graphic Arts Festival of Chaumont was a piece Liemburg titled "Ki-ki-ri-ki." For the large poster, Liemburg extracted elements from vintage French lithographic posters from the 19th century and combined them with cut-outs of giant squid, whales and waves.

While Liemburg can boast a specialty in screen-printing, he's also dabbled in several other mediums. Last summer, Dutch fashion designer Alexander van Slobbe invited him to do some prints for his Orson + Bodil label and in 2004, Liemburg completed work on a silkscreen on glass project, in which his designs were put on the façade of the Walterboscomplex H Tower, a building in the city of Apeldoorn, Holland. Four years ago, Liemburg helped design a stamp for the Dutch Postal Service and this year, they've contracted him to design another. Liemburg, who takes photos of designs that intrigue him, said he has his camera "on hand at all times." "You may not use a certain picture of a design for months and months," Liemburg said. "But when you use it, sometimes it just fits."

Liemburg insists there are too many egos in graphic design and hopes to infuse fun and a greater appreciation for the spatial constructs of graphic design projects. "I hope my students learn they can pursue more creative careers … it's far more than just a job," he said. Liemburg encourages his students to think outside the box. Last month, when Liemburg was in Los Angeles on business he sent his Graphic Design II students to the farthest reaches of the D-line of the MBTA's Green Line to visit the Spellman Museum of Stamps and Postal History at Regis College in Weston. After visiting the museum, students created a handcrafted scrapbook of sorts to Liemburg and additionally created their own false stamps made from existing materials and used them to send him Valentine's cards. The assignment was used to get students more in touch with existing art in the world around them; part of the assignment was to teach students to surrender the use of Google and the Internet for finding inspirations for art. "I'd like to encourage them not to use the computer for a while," Liemburg said, "but use their hands, knife and glue, and improvise."

Sophomore graphic design major Sara Wohl, who is taking two advanced-level classes with Liemburg, said she appreciates the different way Liemburg connects real life to his art. "One of the things he stresses is that everything in life has so many links and connections," Wohl said. "That's a big part of his design and it really is apparent in his posters everything is connected in life and the art world." Middler multimedia studies and graphic design major Natasha Fallahi said she liked looking at art through Liemburg's lens of everyday life as art. "I think it's the exposure to living practicing artists that is really benefiting us the most," Fallahi said."It's nice having the perspective from people that are not used to teaching, but people who are immersed in the art."

Though he has only been in the country for two months, Liemburg has already given a number of lectures. On campus, he has spoken for the International Student and Scholar Institute and conducted a lecture, "Offshore" for the department of visual arts in which he discussed the development of his creative process and the inspiration behind much of his work. Another Amsterdam artist, Harmine Louwe, spoke before Liemburg, bolstering the lecture. Additionally, he has given lectures across the country at the University of California Los Angeles and Minneapolis College of Art and Design and is also scheduled to speak at Massachusetts College of Art, the University of Missouri-Kansas City and Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan next month.

Additionally, Liemburg is planning a trip to Alaska in April where he said he'll put some new camping gear to the test. Naturally, while there he plans to see more of the Pacific Northwest's Indian graphic culture and incorporate it into his work. He also hopes to see old totem poles and crests that have gone through a revival during the past few decades. Liemburg's work is on display in the atrium of Ryder Hall through today. Tonight, he will present a small "slideshow" of pieces used for the silkscreen workshop he gave at CalArts along with silk-screened rock show posters he came across in Minneapolis.

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