The starting point. The idea for the project.

Nebraska's state sign

"I have created the mail-art project "Fernweh..the good life" on the occasion of an 6-week artist-residency in Nebraska City,NE/USA at the KHN Center for the Arts. 

Nebraska City is a small town in the Midwest where the horizon is pretty wide and the sky is big. Nebraska City, the so-called "gateway to the West", the  "Wild West", the Great Plains, the native country of the Plains Indians and many bison. Along with the homestead act and the construction of the railroad across the plains a lot of European farmers rushed in to settle the land in the hopes of finding a new and better life, a good life...  

With this in mind I invited a selected group of international visual artists and writers to send a postcard to me in Nebraska with their very own interpretation of "Fernweh..the good life" Text,drawing, collage,print,photograph,painting - everything is possible. Every artist/writer was asked to add some lines about their personal definition of "the good life" on the postcard's back side. In return, every participant will receive a similar, one-of-a-kind postcard made by me from Nebraska City. 

Right after my arrival in Nebraska City I deicded to extend the project and launched an open call to participate for the people from Nebraska. This Blog is a documentation of all postcards I received during my stay Nebraska City." Anke Becker

Johannes Buchholz

A belated poscard from JOHANNES BUCHHOLZ. "Rüttenscheid Gute Zeit" (Rüttenscheid is part of the town Essen in the Ruhr region of Germany. "Gute Zeit" means "good times")

Johannes is a visual artist and draughtsman from Berlin / Germany - He teaches at "Institut für Kunst und Kunstwissenschaft, Universität Duisburg-Essen" for 3 days a week, therefore he often travels by train from Berlin to Essen and vice versa.

Susanne Schirdewahn

A Fernweh-card from SUSANNE SCHIRDEWAHN, sent from Berlin to my Berlin adress, along with a corresponding homesickness - postcard. I got to know Susanne he first time some month after my stay in Nebraska City and invited her to take part at the project nevetheless. We met during an interview she with me about the Anonymous Drawings Project last summer.

Susanne is an extremly mulitfacated artist: She writes, draws and paints. Her newspaper columns for Berliner Zeitung are always fun to read - they show a lot of her fine sense of humor matched by a great sensibility for the people she talks with.

Ilse Ermen

Another postcard from ILSE ERMEN. Life is good! Ilse took the motive of an original postcard from Ann Arbour, Michigan / 1995

Christiane Küchler Williams

A Fernweh-letter from Christiane Küchler Williams - a late arrival, after I left Nebraska. Christiane and I went to school together, she found me after 25 years through this project and sent these thoughtful lines.

Missy H. Dunaway

A postcard from Missy H. Dunaway, a visual artist, currently living in New York. Missy and I met at the Vermont Studio Center in 2011 - she had her studii right next to mine.  When we met at VSC Missy worked on huge watercolours with feathers.

In 2013 Missy was awarded a Fulbright Research Grant for Painting in Turkey where she studied Anatolian textiles and learned how to weave traditional kilims and knotted pile carpets. In 2014 she was awarded a John Anson Kittredge Educational Grant to extend her research abroad. She made a book with ink drawings about her traveling experiences "Standing in Asia, Looking at Europe, Thinking of New York"