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Nacka, Glasbrukssjön 2023

The Project featuring Glasbrukssjön.
To shine a light on a place of important cultural interest and relevance in our local environment and to highlight climate change.
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The Glass Mobile – Refractions
The mobile, tempting, beautiful, dangerous and jagged pieces of glass to symbolise the colours of water and the sea. Blues and greens intervoven with mirrors to remind us, who needs to act now to make a change. And in the middle a warning, a triangle of red. All these small glass pieces dangling and dancing on thin fragile threads, making music in the breeze and lifted high against the early summer sky in front of the lake, Glasbrukssjön. The tingling sounds of the glass, moving together and knocking each other gently accompanied by specially composed music for the event. The music begins slowly, quietly, seekingly, incorporating the sounds of glass and dripping water and then develops with the distant sounds of ”Solen Glimmar blank och Trind,” as if Bellman himself were passing by on a boat in Skurusund, on his way to Boo Gård or one of the many inns and taverns along Skurusund. Then it quietly fades away into the distance, as if it had never been.
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Glasbrukssjön
In the 1700 ́s the small glass factory in Lilla Björknäs was an important industry, making glass bottles, window panes and mirrors for the ever expanding city of Stockholm. The factory was powered by water flowing from Glasbrukssjön on its way to the nearby Skurusund. There was plenty of wood to serve the ovens and specialised labour imported in the form of glass blowers from Germany. Then it was very simple to take the glass products a few hundrad meters from the factory to the loading jetty in Lilla Björknäs in Skurusund. Transport by land was dangerous, difficult and time consuming so it was preferable to transport goods by sea, river or lake. Water was a connecting artery and very important for developing industries. Skurusund was a very busy waterway, near to the city with lots of inns and taverns along route so it wasn ́t unusual to see Bellman, the famous troubadour playing his quitar on one of the boats in summertime, on his way to Boo or Lännersta Gård.
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Climate Change
Yes, we are living dangerously! We need to put a strong brake on the rampant, negative changes in our climate and look carefully at all we can do as individuals, as a nation and a world.
Glasbrukssjön and Skurusund are as fragile as all the waterways and islands in our archipelago. We are in danger of raised water levels, forest and grass fires even in our little part of the world.
We are living in a very large green house, a Crystal Palace, but for how long?
And as we say, ”People in glass houses shouldn ́t throw stones”.
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Special thanks to:
Sebastian Spendrup for composing the unforgettable music Ringstöms Glas i Stockholm
Nacka Hembygdförening – Henrik Edelstam
Bo hembygdförening – Magnus Sjöstedt
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Aprill Wise Spendrup is an artist who works with different techniques; oil, tempera, acrylic, watercolor and collage. Aprill describes that what is always strongly present is the coloristic encounter with different forms that lead to an image result. “It can be a journey in the image’s own reality that actually takes over from the reality around us but still reminds us of something we quickly recognize in a new way”.