The potential in everything

Geertje’s living room is a large open space filled with her work, collected items, and the potential of new projects. There is an atmosphere rich in creativity, still lifes on tables, walls covered with artworks and collections of objects arranged by type. Not chaos exactly, let’s call it organically supervised creative germination. Welcome to Geertje Huisman’s world! As we sit in her home, which doubles as her studio, she reflects on how her surroundings shape her work, revealing a landscape at once personal and expansive.

Early imprint, trained eye

Geertje Huisman learned how to look from an early age, how to really observe. As a young girl, she joined her mother on visits to museums and galleries, which ignited her interest in art. These visits helped develop her appreciation for art forms and the stories behind them. She was absorbing not only what was on display but also how attention works. Her mother brought intuition and a deep love of art; her father, a scientist, passed on practical insight and hand-crafting skills. Geertje attributes her artistic sensibility to her parents.

“I have my father’s hands, his scientific mind, my mother’s intuition, and her love of art. That’s how I became who I am.”

A single encounter stands out in her memory. At the Gemeentemuseum Arnhem, she stood before Americans in Glass as a fourteen year old, and was moved to tears by the title of a piece. The moment stayed with her and glass, modern glass in particular, became her interest. Later she studied art history in Leiden, choosing a programme that treated applied arts seriously. She immersed herself, wrote her thesis on Dutch glass from the 1960s, attended studios and openings, also as a photographer at events, and built her knowledge by proximity.

Later, in her professional life and work with museums and government collections, she learned to assess value professionally: what should be kept, what could go. For years, this trained eye defined her working life. As a museum advisor, she helped institutions articulate their profiles, make selections, and let go of things. Looking carefully had become her job, one in which her professional opinion mattered. Caring for objects was her responsibility.

The shift to making

Alongside her work and family life, she began making in 2012. Geertje started collecting and assembling, with an eye on what had been discarded. The eye that assessed collections now also lingers over shells and fragments. Not to classify them, but to see what might still grow. “I take something that appeals to me because of the texture, the form or the state of decomposition and the fact it has been thrown away and turn it into something new,” she says, almost offhandedly. It sounds simple, but it isn’t necessarily. “I don’t know yet what it will become, but what I see is potential. I just know I have to start

The very thing she learned to apply to museum collections, namely, how value is constructed, how meaning accumulates over time, now plays out materially and emotionally in her own work. Her house is full. Full to the brim. Drawers, boxes, piles of newspapers, shells, rope, textiles, dried foliage, and found objects — all materials waiting. The irony is not lost on her. Professionally, she advises museums on how to choose. Personally, she struggles to do the same.

Materials and meaning

Much of Geertje Huisman’s work begins outside, moving along the Zuiderstrand and the Zandmotor. She walks, looks, gathers. What she finds is rarely spectacular at first glance: shells, seaweed, fragments, rusted metal, driftwood and mermaids purses, washed ashore. She lays them out, assembles scenes, photographs them, then brings them home, where they may rest untouched for months. She calls this way of working combiMeren: combining and musing at once. There’s hardly a day that passes without collecting or recording what she sees and this practice is central to Geertje’s work. As an act, it is quiet and repetitive. The main ingredients are attention, then intention.There is an enormous drive to make something, to leave it behind and share what she sees and what brings her joy, with others.

Shells, whelks and mermaids' purses play a central role. The shells and whelks are often broken, incomplete and some are ancient, almost like archaeological finds. “All life comes from the sea,” says Geertje. What washes ashore is often dead or damaged but she gathers it anyway. “The sea gives, the tide turns and turns, my hand adds the final gesture.” In her work, healing is not about returning to an original state. It is about connection. Pieces are joined with sandrust (sand-like glue- its a self invented word and material), the seams deliberately visible. Shards become plates, cups, duo-shells.

Shells recur, and from them shelter emerges as a form: objects that suggest protection and vulnerability at once. A more recent body of work around rebuilding takes on a sharper edge. Newspaper images of destruction, including Gaza, enter her thinking as background noise that cannot be switched off. The question runs parallel to her practice: how do you rebuild something from demolished parts, knowing it may not last? “You do your best to make something new from something broken, a new place to shelter.” Her objects do not offer answers. They are artefacts rather than statements and they hold the practice of attention. While some might view her extensive collection as hoarding or obsessive, Geertje sees the potential in worn and lived materials and collecting is a necessary part of her creative journey. She acknowledges her tendency to gather items and the emotional connections they hold. "I am a collector. I can’t throw anything away. Everything has its own life.”

In the same way she repairs broken things in her art, a healing process is taking place within her.    

Personal undercurrents

Alongside her practice runs a quieter struggle. Geertje speaks candidly about burnout and the need for rest and recovery, working with her hands instead of her head. “If I don’t rest and work with my hands and try to recharge, where does the energy come from?” In the same way she repairs broken things in her art, there is a healing process taking place in herself. Her current exhibition at the Wevershuis marks a moment of focus and a chance to reintegrate her artistic practice into her life. “My head wants it, but the question is: can my body do it?” The space, with its age and rawness, immediately felt right. It offered a dialogue partner rather than a backdrop to an exhibition. Some visitors have remarked that the work blends in naturally and could very well remain in the building.

As we conclude our conversation, Geertje reflects on the cyclical nature of her art, finding, collecting, making, and sometimes letting go. Although selling her work is a challenge. “Letting go creates space. I know that rationally. Emotionally, it’s harder. I don’t know where I want to go. I just want to create more space.”

In Geertje Huisman’s world, the sea and natural cycles are the very fabric of her artistic existence. Each piece she creates is an ongoing attention to the beauty of life, by adding her touch a new poetic layer is born.

geertjehuisman.nl

Photos courtesy of the artist. Portrait of Geertje (c) Meike Janssen