HSD – café og brasserie

Thursday October 8th was the grand opening of the brand new shopping-centre in Bømlo. Hundreds and hundreds of people where lined up outside when the doors opened at noon. Why am I telling you about this? In addition to being an important, local place of employment, which I salute, I had the great honor of decorating the common areas with art. To be precise: the café and one of the hallways.

HSD, originally meant Hardanger Sunnhordlandske Dampskipsselskap (Hardanger Sunnhordlandske Steam-engine-company). The lot where all the buses had their garage and parking, gave the nickname to the place. Less than a year ago, the building was torn down, and the brand new shopping-centre was built. It was given the name HSD – HandleSenteret Ditt (which means your shopping-centre) And the café was given the same name: HSD café and Brasserie. The owner and I agreed that a hint of the past should be part of the decoration, to bring the best of the past into the future. Outside the entrance of the café is a big, red bus, just like the ones that would take me to school when I was a little girl.

The seating area is partly outside the café, and you can see my art through the windows. Let me show them to you. (part of the text is from a little brochure I made)

“Island solitare”, 100×150 cm

The people of the sea live in an island paradise: 1004 big and small isles, perfect for swimming, scuba-diving, fishing, boating, dreaming…

“Zahlaquay” 100×100 cm

The sea was the main-road, how we connected, travelled. HSD-ships carried people and goods between the towns along Western Norway. This is from the Zahla-quay in Langevåg, Bømlo.

 

“Siggjo”, 100×150 cm

Every true “Bømling” loves the volcano-shaped mountain. Siggjo, the sea, the seascape and the sun are our favorites. And in the northern most part of the island, Slåtterøy light tower shines it´s light bright, keeping us from going astray.

“Propeller into the future”, 100×100 cm

We´ve lived by and off the sea for centuries. In the industrial age, the shipengine factory was one of the biggest employers. Still today, we excell in propellers! (amoung other offshore things)

“Slåtterøy”, 50×150 cm

“Seascape”, 50×150 cm

All these wonderful people will be working in the café (which now most certainly will be my new favorite hang-out-café)

Inside the rest of the centre, most of the walls are windows into the shops. But there is a long corridor by the toilets, and this is where I made a 360 degrees photo of Bømlo. I collaged around 30 photos together, all taken from the top of Siggjo. It´s 14 meters long! In theory you can see absolutely all 1004 islands in the picture. That was the idea: that everyone living here could find their home-place, maybe even their own house.

I took a snap-photo of these visitors looking at the picture, trying to locate their home. Yay! 🙂

The picture from the other end. Since it is so long, it´s more than a little difficult to see what it loos like in 450 pixels-width!

“Bømlo 360 degrees”, 100×1400 cm

(I´ll have to go back and add some more photos to this post, I don´t have photos of the pictures in their right environment after everything else got into place. It´s a bit busy at my end these days)