17.11 Bernadette van Eps

Bernadette van Eps (1934-2015) made her flat work in glass, the glass mosaics, for example, on her own, but even though she designed the more complex works herself she had those realized in the Netherlands by the well-known glassblower Richard Price at the Van Tetterode Glass Studio in Amsterdam. The three spheres in the Sculpture Garden were blown by Price. They represent planets, which Van Eps has designed in many variations in many colors. When she got older she made planets from balls of cement purchased from a local hardware store which she subsequently reworked with paint and cement. These planets are dull and dark in color, but those by Price are light and shiny. In 2009 all of her planets, entitled Harmonia Caelis, could be admired at the Curaçao Museum. The most important piece of her career, however, is the enormous space-filling glass and metal object “Harmonia Mundi” in the MCB-Bank building at Plaza Jojo Correa in the heart of Punda. It encompasses the sun, the moon, stars and planets in such a way that anyone visiting the bank looks at the bottom of the earth, which is depicted as a river with salmon swimming upstream, representing life. The slowly rotating celestial bodies are driven by an electric motor. That is not the case with the planets at Blue Bay Resort: positioned on three pedestals they shine, while the sun does all the work.