About me

From an early age, I have been involved with art and have painted and drawn a lot - primarily portraits and animals. After school, however, I decided against studying art for various reasons and instead studied book studies, German language and literature, and art history at Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz (Magister 2012, PhD 2017).

 

During my studies, I focused on Johannes Gutenberg and the invention of printing, among other things. I was particularly fascinated by the transitional phase, when the new technology allowed mass production of text, but the initials and decorations that were still added by hand made each copy unique again.

 

Through my studies, I came into contact with the Gutenberg Society, whose management I took over for some time, the Gutenberg Museum and the Gutenberg Foundation. The latter is in charge of the Gutenberg Shop in Mainz and sells, among other things, reproductions of individual pages from the Gutenberg Bible - as in the original with the printed text and coloring by hand. Here I now saw the opportunity to combine my passion for painting and my theoretical knowledge and started painting for the Gutenberg Shop in 2013. Since then I have been working part-time as a freelance artist and have specialized in the field of book painting.

 


Exhibitions/Events

For the exhibition "This Sacred Art" at the Pitts Theology Library at Emory University in Atlanta, I designed this initial on a reprint of the title page of Eusebius' "De evangelica praeparatione" (1470). I filmed the process of gilding and painting the initial, and the videos will also be shown on site. The exhibition can also be visited virtually: digital.pitts.emory.edu.

2 November 2019: Workshop at the Landesmuseum Mainz (http://www.landesmuseum-mainz.de/museum-aktiv/workshopnacht-mein-bauhaus/).

 

16 to 20 October 2019: Live painting at the Frankfurt Book Fair at the Gutenberg Museum stand (Hall 4.1/A32/33).

 

21 to 24 March 2019: Live painting at the Leipzig Book Fair at the Gutenberg Museum stand (Hall 3/H500).

 

10 to 14 October 2018: Live painting at the Frankfurt Book Fair at the Gutenberg Museum stand (Hall 4/N25).

 

2 September 2018: Live painting in the Paulinerkirche in Göttingen as part of the cabinet exhibition "Gutenberg in Göttingen" (http://gutenbergdigital.de/ausstellung2018/).


Publications

Published in March 2019: my dissertation on the book trade system and knowledge space in the early modern period.

https://www.degruyter.com/view/product/507272

Also published in March 2019: The historical children's thriller "Johannes Gutenberg und die verschwundenen Lettern" by Gitta Edelmann and Regine Kölpin. Illustrations and typesetting (under the artist name Juno Sommer) as well as scientific editing are by me.

https://www.gutenberg-shop.de/neu-im-shop/edelmann-koelpin-kinderbuch.html