Wait a minute, what was that? Just for a split second, a wink of an eye, no longer. A gentle breeze caressing the skin that vanishes as quickly as it appears. Something ephemeral – nothing at all really. What was it? Was there anything at all? All of us were explorers at some point in our lives, when we were children. That curiosity, that unbridled talent of being able to hear and see things that only we could perceive and no one else. We knew how to create a sky full of parachutes, an entire universe, just by holding a dandelion in our hands. It was simply magic: unquestioned, eye-popping wonder. But where has it gone? Jutta Werner was an introverted child, reserved at school and quiet at home. And yet whenever creativity was called for, people said: “Ask little Juttel!” She had a refined aesthetic sensibility and an obvious passion for grand productions even then. It was obvious that what drove her was a desire to discover the world. After graduating high school, she left the ‘country’ – the state of North-Rhine Palatinate – to discover the big, wide world, which initially meant Hamburg. The move was, as she recalls now, a revelation. It was there that she met her boyfriend, there that she began to live for poetry. She moved in with him; he was somewhat older than she, about twice her age and yet still a child. Living with him she discovered a voice, a sound, something that would henceforth carry her. It was the sound of an artless and unpretentious poetry. Her own sound, her own voice … it was a yearning for changes and mutations. She hadn’t been seeking things ‘nice’ or beautiful, those boring adornments. What she was looking for was something special: a path to accommodate her transformations. To this day she remains fascinated more than anything by little things, subtleties. She creates whole worlds from a cornflower, a waste product. She follows every detail, never losing sight of it, but expanding and developing it. Her pieces are airy and simple, as if they had somehow just happened. Yet behind them is a ceaseless engine, highly complex and ultra-professional. Jutta remains an intrepid explorer. Her inspiration is disorder, the daily chaos that informs her life engendered by her family, by living with a creative partner and their four sons. It is a healthy antidote to a too-perfect world. She doesn’t experience chaos as a threat, but as abundance: an island of peace and calm. Jutta is a person who ‘sucks out all the marrow of life’, lovingly and tirelessly collecting and collecting until the picture becomes a whole. She wanders like a nomad from one world to another, utterly awestruck at the infinite and inexplicable poetry of being. Theodor Fontane wrote in The Stechlin that admiration is an art too, and that it takes a certain something to recognize greatness for what it is. This art Jutta Werner has mastered, through dedication. And while she would never characterize her own work that way, it is in that sense great and wonderful art.
Nahuel Lopez, journalist+author