WORLD WIDE WEST is an art-project for cultural exchange between foreign and local artists in cooperation with the Burghauptmannschaft of Austria, the ceramic association  IKSIT and schools inInnsbruck.

WIDE WEST is equivalent to a synonym for a NEW WORLD.

NEW WORLD represents terms such as movement, awakening, propagation, hope, immigration, settlement and a new homeland; responsible handling with resources, development and effects of the affluent societies, richness, poorness, environmental arrangement (composition).

Leaving one’s homeland and familiar surroundings, whether forced or voluntarily, triggers a letting go of the past and of familiar and well-known situations. It forces us to challenge ourprejudice and traditions, to select material and spiritual goods (values?), which are worth to beingtaken over. It claims to open us for something new.

The search for a new homeland – a new world – also creates unimagined scope and possibilities. Old cultures meet new cultures and expand the multi-facetted wealth of art even further.

Exposed

In a boat at night

I pushed

And pushed along a bank (…)

Nothing was certain

There was only wonder (…)

A stranger, gone mute before unopened realms,

I froze through the grim years.

I chose love to be my homeland

(Mascha Kaléko, a poet who was forced to emigrate from Berlin to New York with her husband in 1938)

ELISABETH MELKONAYN, GABRIELA NEOP-STILDORF and MICHAEL ENGELE, as well as artists living in Paducah (Kentucky, U.S.A.) initiate this project.

TERI MOORE, FREDA FAIRCHILD, PAUL LORENZ, LILY LIU, MAY WONG

During the Project WIDE WEST the artist will exhibit their works in the Foyer of the Imperial Palace in Innsbruck for 14 days in April 2013. The artists of Paducah will be offering workshops in the fields of painting, graphics, graphic prints, textile arts and ceramics in April 2013 for pupils in several schools.

The resulting works of the students of KATH. BAKIP, KOLLEG, BORG Innsbruck, Neue Mittelschule Müllerstraße, KORG Innsbruck,will be shown in the second half of April 2013 in the Foyer of the Imperial Palace of Innsbruck.