Meet Vinko, he will tell you the rest himself!
As time flows by, with every season I get more and more proud, almost to the proportion of self-conceit, that some ten years ago I helped Le Petite Festival du Theatre to see the light of the day.
Its creator Vinko (Prizmić), born in the middle of the City Walls of Dubrovnik, was craving to ”donate’’ to his beloved city the kind of art and spirit Dubrovnik was lacking in the sea of its mainstream cultural events.
I should really have said: ”his peculiar kind of spirit”, indeed. For, more than any of my numerous friends, Vinko manages to escape the Weltschmerz by constantly trying to hover above the earth, looking for love, perpetrating it, producing it, giving it unselfishly through his writing, through the design of jewellery, and through very peculiar events (as was his own funeral staged from the US and South America, across Europe and in Australia; at some places, police were called to intervene, and Vinko is still alive, don’t worry), applying the teachings in metaphysics from an incredible Guru he found in Pnom Penh… I could go on. Only God could list all of his activities and excursions.
Once an owner of a reputed little arts gallery in Amsterdam, he got quite famous for having refused to sell a piece of art to Michael Jackson! To him arts are too precious, too sincere to just be disseminated to whoever. On the same belief, just a couple of weeks back, he staged a tiny art shop in his own little house close to the City Walls. Nothing special, were it not for its business policy: he sold his pieces only to the people he liked. If you had no aura or charisma he could feel, you were refused even to look at the items for sale. The shop closed, as planned, after four days.
But that is Vinko, simply. Our little festival went on, in between funerals, metaphysics and all that stuff.
We wrote a bit about it and quoted some more interesting bits about Vinko and the festival that is just about to happen in Hanko, Finland, for the third consecutive year.
And there goes Vinko and his mind again. Finland is celebrating its 100th year of independence and he felt he should do something special for the occasion. As one does, you know. In brief, his grandmother used to make her morning coffee the old way, known as ”Turkish” and sometimes she would turn the cup over and try to read what was in store for her in the arabesques the coffee left on the saucer and in the cup. Early on, curious about her focused analysis, all he could discern were the ”coffee drawings”. Art, in other words.
Preparing for his special gift to the people of Finland, he was taking photos of his own coffees over many, many mornings. The result is a Vinko-style book with one ”coffee drawing” for each of the 100 years of Finnish independence. The book is on its way from Croatia to Finland as I write this.
Why don’t we join in? Let’s raise a cup of coffee and bid: Happy anniversary, Finland!
