who we are
Your sternstunden family consists of experienced artists and experts from various artistic and cultural areas. But above all, we are a warm and creative community and we enjoy passing on our skills to other people.
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We see in all people very individual personalities who we relate to with mindfulness and attention. With our creative program, we want to help everyone in their personal development to find their creative voice and style.
In addition to courses and workshops, most of us also make our own art or are active in various artistic and cultural areas. This keeps us fresh and excited about our courses and our customers because we always see how special it is to share our creativity and enthusiasm with our community. We have been making a lively, colorful and contemporary program for you with great joy since the beginning of 2014 and we hope to continue to inspire you with our ideas, workshops, art and with our good energy.
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Maya
medical anthropologist and art facilitator
What is important to me
We at studio sternstunden celebrate a diverse, colorful and creative world. However, our visible everyday life in this world is only the tip of the iceberg and we need spaces to explore the rest of the ice. And since we all know that art can do more than just hang on the wall and be looked at reverently, I specialize in process-oriented and participatory activities. From a 'finite, portable and commercializable product', art becomes an 'ongoing or long-term project with an unclear beginning and end' (1). I would like to see more of this art in all of our lives, more exchange between artists and participants, more reflection and communication - with ourselves and with others - more contextualization, more experimental spaces in which uncertainty does not cause fear, more openness and more windows and doors to the world. I wish everyone a substantive and practical access to art and creativity and we at studio sternstunden provide everyone who is interested with tools for their own journey. Whether for understanding, holding, remembering, connecting, letting go or naming(2), whether privately or publicly, I would like to see greater enthusiasm, broader interest and more participatory opportunities for art and creativity in our society.
(1) Bishop, Claire: Artificial Hells: participatory art and the politics of spectatorship, Volume 1. London 2012. P. 2
(2) Riccardakiel.de
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Malort Sternstunden and how it started
In July 2013 I completed the training for the serving role in the painting game with Arno Stern in Paris. The time in Arno Stern's Malort and the encounter with Arno Stern himself was a very special time for me. Arno Sterns' attitude towards childhood and life spoke to my soul, especially as a mother. The conviction that there must be more places of this kind, more manifestations of a tolerant and appreciative attitude to life, more opportunities to pause, reflect and digest was simply a consequence.
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In the spring of 2014 I was able to open the painting venue Sternstunden in a beautiful, bright corner shop in Frankfurt. Over the past years, my studio has become a wonderful place of peace and relaxation, clarity and creativity. Here, participants are inspired by the atmosphere of the rooms, supported by the painting game, guided by mindful course instructors and motivated by diverse groups.
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Since 2014, in addition to my own courses, I have been working with children and young people from schools, vocational schools, kindergartens, daycare centers and afternoon care. I provide further training for educators and I help to set up painting spaces in schools and kindergartens. Since 2018, I have been working as an art facilitator in the You&Eye project of the Frankfurt Cultural Department/Culture Office.
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The development of the studio sternstunden
With my background as a social and medical anthropologist and my attitude as a 'lifelong learner', the studio sternstunden has grown into a place of creative development over the last 10 years. Today the studio offers a variety of opportunities, including the Painting Place, the Creative Lab, the Comic Workshop, the Creative Day Events and the Drawing Workshop. My goal is to continuously develop new and exciting offers for you that make access to creativity as uncomplicated and fascinating as possible.​
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My message to you
I am particularly happy about adults and adult groups who find their way to me and take the leap into creativity; many times its a difficult step, as our societal attitude towards art and creativity burdens us with many misconceptions about our own abilities. Let me explain this to you and show you what I mean in my workshops!
For me, creativity is something we all have within us. It is something that - just like sports - we can and should all practice in some way. Creativity allows us to shed emotional baggage, it clears our heads and lightens our hearts, it enables us to contextualize our lives and recognize our paths. With my work and together with the studio sternstunden family, I want to make art and creativity tangible and accessible to everyone.
Sylvain
illustrator and artist
Born in France in 1976, the Sylvain initially worked in industrial design in his home country and worked as a graphic designer in Paris and Lisbon before moving to his adopted home of Frankfurt. In addition to his wonderful illustrations, which he also exhibits and sells, he now also does his wonderful comic workshop in our studio.
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In his comic workshop, the children are inspired and supported to put their ideas on paper. They will learn to make sketches and tell stories in different ways through drawing. They also work on movement, storyboards, speech bubbles and backdrops from comic production in order to then make their own comic. The children are supported in overcoming the reflex of wanting to draw perfectly at once and thus they are enabling their ideas and creativity to run wild. (“Staying in the flow”). Another part of the workshop consists of creative exercises from the visual field. A tree will talk to a house. A giraffe will walk between the skylines. There are no limits to imagination, everything is possible!
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And because we always want to bring you the workshops that we want for our own children, Sylvain offers the comic workshop bilingually. For everyone who would like to practice a little bit of their French from school or children who just wants to babble a bit in French, but also for native speakers who want to experienc more French in their lives, our creative workshop offers this exciting extra feature.
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Owi
multimedia artist and lecturer
Owi is an important part of the Sternstunden family. He has known Maya since kindergarten and has been doing workshops at Sternstunden since the beginnings of the studio (2014). His two robot workshops (brush robots and talking robots) combine technology with creativity, they are unique (although they have now been copied by others and - in other cities - offered as courses) and EXTREMELY popular with children and parents. The robot workshops are offered two to three times a year at Sternstunden.
Lots of people ask us why Owi isn't with us much more often. This is because Owi also has his own great family with three children, works as a multimedia artist, develops computer games, makes animated films and - to earn money - he also designs multimedia exhibition formats for the car industry and works as a lecturer for interactive media. In any case, we are always very happy to have Owi with us, not only because Owi is so creative and can build anything, but also because he is so casual, cool and always relaxed and friendly.
Laura
illustrator and author
Laura Sofie Hantke created the STUDIO LULA together with Lucas Grassmann. Both have been working in the field of graphic design and illustration since 2015. One of their first joint projects was the book “In unserer Küche wird gedruckt,” which was published by Hermann Schmidt Verlag in autumn 2016. Since then, Laura and Lucas have traveled to many cities and countries, where they introduce people who love printing to Kitchen Litho in their workshops. Since 2018, Laura has been holding her incredibly popular printing workshops in studio sternstunden.
Oliver
artist / sculptor
Oliver is a freelance artist and sculptor and he works, among other things, in the integrative educational project You&Eye for the Frankfurt Cultural Office. Since his childhood in Porto, Portugal, Oliver has traveled with pen and paper and was equally fascinated by impressive buildings and people.
He was then very technically influenced through his art studies at the Städelschule, because there he learned the mathematical level of drawing, mastered the depth effect of lines and structures and discovered the art of abstraction and construction as his passion. Thematically, the interplay between good and evil runs through his art - from real people, the quiet heroes of everyday life, wild rockers or the often forgotten oppressed to the fantasy world of glittering superheroes and loud monsters.
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In his drawing workshop at our studio, Oliver works in a process-oriented and non-judgmental manner. As needed, he shows the children everything they want to know and can learn about proportions, perspectives and drawing techniques, without interfering with the content of the individual's creative process.