Soul mates for life Student Roos Van de Velde and teacher Frits Vandenbussche| Elien Haentjens A teacher and his student. Sometimes the two don’t get along, but now and then there is magic in the air. At times the mutual respect can be so great that a lifelong bond is formed. The unusual story of a student, the ceramic artist Roos Van de Velde, and her teacher, designer-artist Frits Vandenbussche.
house you see her personality coming through right down to the smallest details. Everything is true, nothing is fake. Drawing that line so consistently is not easy.” “It’s a long process. I brooded over my paintings of poppies for twenty years, for example. And then suddenly, it was done: the feeling was right and I was able to start painting my own poppies. At a moment like that, your whole body tingles. The unity that I express through my work is something for which Frits laid the groundwork in his classes,” the ceramic artist notes.
“During Frits’s nature drawing classes – or to use Frits’s words, ‘information drawing’ – in year 9, I was able to be myself in class for the first time”, Roos begins. “That was a great relief for me, since until then I did not like going to school at all. Frits allowed me to stay in my own little world. He did not find it a problem that I only occasionally let the world around me filter through,” the ceramic artist continues. “I can still see you sitting there at your writing desk,” Frits replies. “You were not cut out for the classroom, you were never really present in class. You followed your own personal route.” “You succeeded in opening up doors inside, enabling someone to give his or her best. I think that is a particular gift in a teacher”, states Roos. “What a compliment,” laughs Frits, “now I can rest in peace!”
Roos Van de Velde shares her love of nature not only with Frits, but also with a few top chefs. Thus she developed a dinnerware set for the Belgian chef Arabelle Meirlaen, the only Belgian woman with a Michelin star. “Arabelle runs a very feminine kitchen. During our forest or herbal walks she collects ingredients for her dishes. In early October, we published the cookbook Mijn intuïtieve keuken [My intuitive kitchen] together. I created a few unique pieces specially for her dishes,” Roos recounts. Roos also collaborates with top people in the world of gastronomy beyond our borders. Thus in January she designed the Set de Sept dinnerware set under the aegis of Serax, in collaboration with Michel and Sébastien Bras, and is working on a commission for the Spanish Roca brothers, whose cuisine at their restaurant El Celler de Can Roca stands very close to nature. She also has contacts with Albert Adrià, the brother of Ferran Adrià, and with Heston Blumenthal. “Blumenthal’s restaurant is located in a cosy little house. I am keen on redecorating it and designing a dinnerware set customised for his dishes. I have already sent in my designs”, Ross tells us enthusiastically.
Fortuitous encounter At the end of her high school years, Roos Van de Velde went to see the principal of her school, the Imelda institute in the Molenbeek borough of Brussels, with the request to be allowed to take only Frits’s classes. Since the answer was negative, she transferred for her further studies to the Royal Academy of Antwerp. But after two years she left. “Our studio was a room with no daylight. I really couldn’t work there. In the meantime I had heard that Frits was teaching evening classes in Anderlecht, but when I wanted to enrol, he had just stopped.” And so the two of them lost touch. Until Frits suddenly, twenty years later, showed up unannounced in Kapelle-op-den-Bos. “He was taking a cure at the health centre nearby. Because he found the lighting really lovely, he asked who had made it. And so all of a sudden there he was, standing in the doorway. He had not changed at all over the years,” recounts Roos.
True to oneself
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Their deep bond is closely related to their shared view of the world. They take as their starting point the soul of nature, and feelings have the upper hand over reason. They try to remain as faithful as possible to themselves. “We feel close to each other thanks to that philosophy. We understand and value each other. We support each other and allow each other to continue to follow this path. Looking with your soul is not so simple nowadays. It does not exactly fit with today’s educational model either,” says Roos. “And yet I remain convinced that the greater someone’s love for nature, the cleverer one can be. For only if you no longer allow yourself to be guided by the conditioning of the world in which we live, but go in search of the basic principles of nature yourself, can you begin to understand everything”, Frits points out. “Roos is one of the few people I know who can play so freely with these concepts. That she remains so true to herself in that play is something I find extraordinary. Not only in her work, but also here in her
Nature on the plate
Bound forever Roos also works with Frits on various projects, for since they met again they have become like family. Together they created a pottery series, for example, that Roos later painted, and Frits made the frame for a floor lamp that Roos will decorate with porcelain tiles. Roos uses the tactile objects that Frits has been creating out of different types of wood in recent years, in order to add texture to her ceramics. “What I find so great is that I give her something that she then uses, with great respect, in her own manner. Like me, she often reuses objects and materials, and yet she always remains true to her own visual language.” A good example of their shared visual language is the wooden, organic-looking boxes that Frits put together for Roos’s sketchbooks. Like the sketches in the notebooks, they are very pure and freely designed. “If I need inspiration, I leaf through my sketchbooks. When you once house-sat for me here, you even drew in them at one point,” Roos recalls. “Was I really so ill-mannered?” replies Frits. “But I didn’t mind at all! On the contrary: your stylized rose became the basis for one of my logos,” concludes Roos. And so the teacher is immortalized in the work of his student. A nicer sign of appreciation could hardly be imagined. “Your work is pure poetry, pure pleasure. You express yourself as you really are. You feel that there is a true and sincere person behind your work,” says Frits. “That feeling is entirely mutual,” replies Roos. A teacher and his student can indeed be soul mates for life. www.roosvandevelde.be