SONJA TANRISEVER

Sonja Böhlander Tanrisever is a Swedish Turkish freelance artist lately living in Istanbul and  it has been 58 years that she teaches children and adults in art, besides writing poems and articals mainly focused on educational matters.

As a young person in Sweden, she received education in art and pedagogy (sculpture, drawing, painting and textile design). Simultaneously she had started gathering children and youngsters in her studio for their obtaining experiences in art making. She found opportunity to set up an art school for adults within Swedish workers educational association (ABF) as well as participating in her first exhibitions.

During her later life with family in Turkey, above mentioned basic fields of activities have been further developed, like own art (6 one-man shows and 22 group exhibitons), teaching adults in art. She has also been lucky of setting up her therapeutic rehabilitation section for adults at a university hospital psychiatry clinic in Istanbul. Her main occupations in teaching though, have been establishing many kinds of creative environments for young persons from various sociocultural standards of living. These has become realized as a kind of “building bridges” within different leading cultural and educational institutions sometimes between nations. Ofthen such involvements have had character of connecting institutions with one another. In this context, particularly teachers’ training has been a vital interest.

Through contribution of a certain established blend of Swedish Turkish art pedagogical model, by time it’s influences have come at least to a certain degree get gradually ramified within the country. For the time being besides working in her own studio on pictorial / sculptural weavings, she is actively working as art consultant in a private kindergarten (AKD American Cultural Association), pa private primary school (Harvard International American College, Istanbul) and TYSA (Life Therapy Art Association in Istanbul). Among her publications can be found;

“Innovations in children’s art education” Yildiz Teknik University Muzecilik ve Egitim

“Integration and Playfulness For Children In Art Pedagogical Education InSEA (International Education Through Art), 2004

“Art Pedagogical Seminar Cultural Bridges Between Nations” Swedish Institute, 2003

“SKYGD Experiments In Supporting Social and Cultural Life” Programs For Art Studios , Importance of Creating For Child and Youngster and Their Relations With Material, 2009

In these days, together with her daughter Esin Tanrisever she is about to publish an E-Book “Introduction To Free Art Learning With Kids”

She is a regular artical writer in an online magazine “Children On Earth” of American Cultural Association

Artist is a board member of UPSD (International Society of Plastic Arts), member of InSEA (International Society For Education Through Art), SKYGD (Association for Development of Social and Cultural Life) and AREM (European Rehabilitation Center. Pieces of her art works do take place at collections in different parts of the World.

Upon Sonja’s Art works: “Artists’ works may be associated with travelling… Dreamlike states of journeys between different dimensions of time and space. Outlines vanish and borders between dream and reality, past-time/ present time gets overlapped into each other. Lines, colors, shapes and textures come to symbolize Artist’s thoughts and emotions.

In usual dreams one more or less drifts along in uncontrollable sequences of events. Also artists in ‘dream’ state, ‘witnesses’ in a kind of awake condition stuff that dreams are made of: fragmentary images of experienced perceptions from past or present life. These now gather together, get confronted, reborn and embodied into pieces of art.”

ESIN TANRISEVER

Having a great deal of experiences being active in innovative art pedagogical projects and being supported by leading cultural and educational institutions, she has cooperated as organizer and runner of art workshops for children in South America and Turkey. She also has experiences in assisting, founding and running art training courses for teachers and then supervise these teachers for teaching their own children.

Through extensive experiences in different professional artistic environments (like studies in painting, sculpting, batik), she has come to develop and exhibit a personal style of artistic expression, in which, influences from Nature plays a dominant role. She is a member of InSEA (International Society For Education Through Art). She also keeps writing short stories and articles.

She is a member of the NGO “AKUT” Search & Rescue Society and has participated in social responsibility projects with different duties like having been head of K9 Rescue Dog Training Department. She got a degree on tourism and hospitality services from Bilkent University Ankara, Turkey.

Esin Tanrisever holds multiple citizenships of Sweden and Turkey and resides for the time being in Istanbul, Turkey. Besides above mentioned experiences, she is partner and director of innovative companies in the field of Health & Medical Technologies both in Istanbul-Turkey and San Fransisco Bay Area-US, following up with the projects of her father, who has been a brilliant scientist.

From Esin upon materials she uses in her Art Works: “Bark or branch of a tree, a stone, bone of an animal, feather of a bird or a sea shell… All these natural objects, however modest they may seem at first glance, have very lyrical expressions of their own. And it’s like as if they can tell about stories they have lived through…

From the very moment of first facing them when placed on my canvas, a relationship between me and them gets started… According to their shapes, colours, structures, smells…

 And so I come  to be a shell and the shell becomes me. Discovering at this time that I’ve found a language of my own.”