Intergenerational group show with Angelika G. Wetzel, Enzio Wetzel, Tonja Wetzel and Louie Wetzel at Koganecho, B-Site Gallery, Yokohama, 2024
After my German grandfather's funeral - my father's father, I went on a walk with my sculptor grandmother. She held my arm as we were walking and with a little shake of her head and surprise in her voice she said: I always thought, after death, I will understand something; I will know something more, but I understand nothing at all.
After her passing in 2011, the house was full of not only her art: sculpture, reliefs, drawings, eggs, horns, feathers, colors, paper, bronze, it was also filled with relatives and offspring. Humans she helped create and sculptures she formed. The only free room for the night was her studio, in which I slept. Her sculptures watched over me that night, anxious to know what would happen after she was gone. I am her grand-daughter, my father is her son. My nephew met her when he was a baby, born in Munich, now growing up in Yokohama. I once told my nephew about life as an artist, and at 10 years old his answer was: but this is no way of making a living, is it? How did he know? Indeed, as Kurt Vonnegut the German born American writer once put it: "The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake."
Apparently, art is also passed on down the family tree: like a curse, like a blessing. Despite his knowledge of art's futility, my nephew Louie keeps creating, my father Enzio despite is years of work to raise his children, always made room to build. His work hangs above my bed. My grandmother's sculpture now watches over my own studio. Art does not only make the soul grow, it illuminates the souls of all who are touched by it.
