The Baptist church in the Oranjestraat in Assen has been sold again. But it remains a place for art and culture. Last year it came on sale, after painter Jan van Loon had been there for years with his studio, and kept exhibitions. But the world is small. A former student of him from the Minerva Academy is now the proud owner of the church: artist Wilma Mencke (68), blown over from Sellingen.
Her artists’ name is MW Goldjebloum, after her birth name Maria Wilhelmina. She is originally Drentse, because from Emmer-Compascuum. For years she ran a gallery in the city of Groningen, known as Putti, later Albion Putti. All in all, she has now been relocated eighteen times. Assen is her newest place.
Mencke has been maker of special embroidery art for several years, on photographed nature. And she gives workshops in meditative embroidery. “Embroidery an hour every day, I can recommend it to anyone.” She has since renamed the historic house of God in the church of Goldjebloum.
“This place must be something that people fails, and so I named it after the marigold, Calendula. It does good things for humans, because it is a healing flower. I had two grandmothers from Groningen, and they were always talking about Goldjebloum.”
In recent years, the church was mainly in the picture because of the installation of a beautiful ceiling painting, with the history of the Baptists. The picturesque scenes on many meters height were made by students of the Classic Academy in Groningen in three years.
Mencke heard by accident that the church was for sale. When she had to be in the Drents Museum for a ‘professional embroidery job’ somewhere last year, and yet once in Assen, she went by out of curiosity to look inside. Then she was quickly sold.
“The church enchanted me, and then decided” buy me, “she says with a smile. “And then I quickly did business with the broker. The church chose me, as it were.” And so it happened that Mencke could land in the municipal monument on the Oranjestraat.
And there is still a lot of work to do there. “Well, certainly. The church still needs to be done, that is unfortunately a bit neglected. Walls at the top of the niche on the front. So work on the store.” She does living behind it, in the former service home, transformed by her into a comfortable bungalow.
In any case, her intention is that the church is a place for exhibitions, also for other artists, and for concerts, lectures or workshops. But what happens in the church must fit ‘with the atmosphere of stilling’. “It must lead to some contemplation and self -reflection. See it as a meditative moment that you come here, and that you come to inner peace.”
After all, she also gets some years older, says Mencke. Moreover, in addition to being an artist, she is also an energetic therapist, and active in the field of self -healing. “If there are exhibitions here, then it should not suffice with all kinds of panels with art, so that you hardly see the church inside. It is too good for that.”
She bites Goldjebloum herself in her own church in a few weeks in a few weeks. She exhibits more than a hundred small handbreking works, with embroidery on photos on canvas, so that flowers and also faces get a 3D effect and seem to come to life. The title is Build on our true nature. According to Mencke, it is ‘the harvest of more than four years daily meditative embroidery’.
On Easter Monday, April 20, the church must be ready for reopening. Mencke then wants to be open every Sunday with her church of Goldjebloum.