We're in the Studio, Quinn's in New York

It's been a glorious week of blue skies, magnificent sunrises and quiet days. I never loved winter when I lived in California, but here it has become one of my favorite seasons of the year. I have so much time to dream and play in my studio, which is about all I did this whole week.

Meanwhile, Quinn the world traveler (he has visited 9 countries already in his almost 3 years) is in New York City while his father plays in an off-Broadway production of Fragments, by Samuel Beckett and directed by Peter Brook. Read a review from the New York Times here.

The theater and hotel are near Central Park, so Quinn is spending lots of time out-of-doors in the glory of a late New England autumn.

Jos has days free to explore the park with Quinn. Emily has been helping teach a workshop at the theater.

Quinn had heard about the famous dinosaur bones in the Natural History Museum and he was really anticipating this visit. He asked me before he left if he was going to be allowed to feed the dinosaurs. I told him the problem was that they have no tummies.

Emily and James have always loved their uncle Andy, who lives in Rochester. He is the youngest brother of their late father, who died when they were about Quinn's age. Andy has many of the qualities their father had, so it is no wonder that he and his wife Marsha have always been dear to them. When they came to see the show, Quinn took to Andy and Marsha right away as well.

Quinn is enjoying the sights and sounds of the city. He especially likes the taxis. He got his own miniature version. When taken to Times Square he did pronounce it as boring, however.

In the park is a children's museum where there are lots of activities. I loved this picture of Quinn making a little sculpture.

So wonderful!

Emily and Quinn fly home tomorrow and we will spend next weekend with them. Jos stays on until the end of next week.

***

I had an energetic week in the studio, beginning with reorganizing and cleaning the space itself. It took me two full days to break down the boutique (which I do every winter), rearrange my furniture, scrub everything from top to botton, shuttle books up and down stairs to make room for even more books and in general set the stage for a productive winter season next to the cozy fireplace.

I experimented with a lot more chine collé, this being only one of many we printed. It is a fun process that deserves a lot more exploration.

I have hundreds of family photos and I always enjoy making little portraits of ancestors, which I also indulged myself in this week. Not one of these folks is still alive today.

I continued on my nature journal as well, though finding nature inside rather than out.

Here is a drawing some of the shells I collected during summer outings.

Towards the end of the week we decided to drag our photo etching box out of retirement in our garden shed and try once again to make it work. Rick made this box to expose photo-sensitive plates a couple of years ago and at first it seemed to work very well. We really enjoyed the process, even having a class one summer. All of a sudden it seemed to go all wrong and we couldn't get our plates to develop correctly. We didn't change our process but the images were not turning out with any contrast. The plates are fairly expensive, about 10€ a piece, so after spending a tidy sum trying to get a good result and failing, we retired our box altogether. We assumed that we had a bad batch of plates, that they had already been exposed to light, but our provider would not confirm a problem on their side, so we just shelved the whole process. I did buy a couple more several months ago since they were on sale and I've had them in my drawer since. Georges, who uses a much more expensive and professional process than this one (you can see it here) inspired us to try again. Here's the process step-by-step:

You begin with a photo and create a black and white positive on transparent film.

This will be exposed onto a photo-sensitive plate with this box, which shines a UV light onto the plate through the transparency.

The plate is posed on a backing board, the transparency is placed on top and a piece of glass is placed over this and squeezed in place with clamps to hold the plate and transparent image together snugly.

The UV light must be turned on before the plate is placed inside and needs to sufficiently warm up.

The plate is placed in the box and left to expose for three minutes. This is more or less like exposing a solar plate, but faster.

The transparency is removed and a half tone screen is placed over the plate in its place and again exposed to the light, this time for a minute and a half. This adds the half tone dots which allows for better printing of dark areas, like in a newspaper before the digital revolution.

The plate is developed in clear warm water. This is a completely non-toxic technique. We can already see here that this is working! The plate is a good one...much to my pleasure and disbelief.

The plate is dried with a hair dryer so that water streaks from the development process can be eliminated. This is actually the trickiest part of the whole thing.

The plate is put back in the box for a few minutes further harden the emulsion for printing. The edges are then beveled to prevent cutting the paper or press blankets.

Here's the finished plate. We haven't printed it at all yet, as it has to rest for a while but we can more or less tell that it has all developed rather well. Hopefully I can show you printed results next week.

Another week come and gone. Holiday thoughts are starting to bubble up.

Enjoy your last days of November.

Week 33: Rainy Days

We don't live in Normandy, where it rains significantly more in winter. We're just far enough south that our climate is generally very pleasant. In fact I notice that rain often comes at night and is over by the time the sun comes up. Certainly days and days of rain, or even hours and hours are quite rare. This week has been the exception. Here was our seven day forecast:

And it mostly lived up to it. The sound of rain on the skylights was a kind of background music to our days and nights this week. In our area every time it rains the farmers and gardeners are very happy. They can never have too much. It somehow makes it much easier to bear the grayness when I think of M. Villette or Garden Man enjoying the drumming on the rooftops from the shelter of their cozy cottages, contemplating the rising water table. Besides, with the rain come warmer temperatures.

Rick suggested I name my post Rainy Day Windows as I took so many photos of raindrops sliding down panes of glass. I do love the windows in our house and especially the views from each. I post only a few here.

Looking into the studio from outside

The spot on the terrace where water accumulates

 

Marc and Jean-François painted their shutters. I love how the bare shoots of the trees match in color

***

Most of the week was spent in the atelier, with no great adventures out of doors. We kept cozy by the fire. It really warms the entire space wonderfully well.

On Friday, just as we were getting a bit fed up with staying in, the sun came out and bathed the wet walls and pavement with golden light. We put on our jackets and ventured out.

Side street leading up to the Place de l'Eglise from the bar

Walking past the workmen's gardens we discovered a group of chickens in their yard enjoying the  afternoon sunshine. I imagine worms were ripe for the harvesting.

 

***

Our friend Georges came back this week to work in the atelier. We had not seen him since September. He has two new plates made by Fanny Boucher, who uses a complicated technique for transferring photographic images onto copper plates. She works for some of the most celebrated artists in Europe who wish to make prints of their images. We once visited her in her glorious studio. She is very charming.

Georges working over the hotplate. The photo was shot from outside looking in.

I enjoy it when the studio is in full use, messy and lively. We cranked the music up and had a grand time working together on our separate projects. Georges has two new images. One is of a beautiful young pygmy girl and the other a slice of apple, which looks, for all the world, like a funny gnome.

It is always informative to watch other printmakers at their craft. Everyone works differently. Georges uses a roller to put on his ink. I generally use a dauber, but I may adopt his technique, as it spreads the ink more evening and thinly. He warms his ink on the heater before spreading it around and he generally mixes up a huge amount. Of course he does only printing while here, and in the course of the two days on site, he probably made close to one hundred impressions. I tend to print just three or four at a time.

As usual Georges came prepared with his hand colored papers. He uses spray mount to glue the thin frames around his printed image. The white printing paper, the glued hand colored thin frame paper and the inked plate all go through the press at the same time.

Paper is dampened in water for an hour before printing

He also sometimes glues thin tissue over some of his images to lend broad color. Of all the prints he makes, he will, in the end, save just a few and throw all the others away. He works in large quantities so that he has many choices and can get everything exactly right.

***

It looks like more rainy days ahead and more days with Georges in the studio. Next week we have clients.

Week 5: Some Pleasures of Summer

Perche Landscape

Summer arrives in France with music in the streets. In 2000, before we moved to France, I spent a summer living with Emily in a rented apartment in the heart of St-Germain-des-Prés and it was there that I first experienced the Fête de la Musique. Begun in 1982 in Paris, it has spread throughout Europe. It is essentially an all night party to celebrate the summer solstice. On almost every street corner musicians of many styles and ethnicities play and sing. Huge crowds gather, mingle, and then move on to the next free venue. No one sleeps! The musicians, most professional, are all unpaid. It is a lively and exciting affair and happens throughout France in the bigger cities.

In our village last year Alain organized a mini version. He is the neighbor who can be seen around town walking on a rhinestone leash either his Chevalier King Charles dog named Barnaby or his pygmy goat named Bernaby. Alain dragged his recorded music collection, huge speakers and disco ball outside Annette's and blasted the village with oompa and accordion music. I don't think he had too many takers. This year, since the 21st was on a Monday, we didn't have the pleasure of his deejay skills. It was silent in Montmirail.

***

A few weeks ago I received a call from a professional photographer named Georges, who lives in Paris and works all over the world for various NGOs. He owns a weekend home outside the village and one day discovered our atelier by chance. He was quite amazed, apparently, to discover that there were photogravure (photo-etching) facilities right here in this tiny hamlet. He was also overjoyed, since photogravure is his hobby and his printer in Paris had just retired. He rang to ask if he could occasionally rent our studio to print his own plates, which are made by Fanny Boucher the only active héliograveur in France. This is a technique ancient and very precise. A photographic image is developed on a copper plate using a photosensitive emulsion. Fanny works with some of the most famous photographers in the world. Her incredible atelier, which we visited a few years ago, is filled with photographic equipment from the early part of the last century, huge sinks, drying racks and dust free rooms, kept clean as a whistle. She works like a scientist.

 This was the week that Georges came with his plates to make some prints. We had a lot of fun working with him as he experimented with different papers, inks and border designs, that he had drawn  onto the paper before printing. He also works a lot with chine collé, gluing decorative papers on the basic printing paper to either create a border around the image, or a decorative surface to print upon. He made print after print and viewed each result with the eyes of a perfectionist, making minute corrections. He had only two images, one of a beautiful young African woman and the other of a  Indian girl. He entertained us with stories of tramping through the jungles of Africa and coming upon tribes of natives who had not been exposed to white men before. He brings his old Polaroid camera with him and takes instant photos which he gives to his  subjects. (His refrigerator is filled with boxes of polaroid film that he bought from New York when it was announced several years ago that this venerable old technology was going to disappear.) The photographic images are, obviously, quite magical to most of the people he photographs, as they have never experienced it before. He typically gives the photo to his subject and keeps the negative, which is what he uses to create his own images. 

Of course I find it inspiring to watch other artists at work. We exchanged techniques, shared supplies and in general had a wonderful time. Tomorrow Georges comes back again, this time with his 11 year old daughter Leyla, who will be taking an etching course from me while her father continues his experimentation. Out of the scores of images he will make in the end, he tells me that he will save only five and throw the rest away.

 

***

One of the big events in town this week was that the house across from us, owned by Jean-François and Marc had its final coat of enduit put on. There is no English translation for this word, since it means simply "coating" but is a much more specific technique which is not often employed in the United States. Basically lime and sand and water are mixed together and slathered on the outside of a stone building to give a wonderfully rich and colored facing. It's like frosting. The resultant color is entirely dependent upon the kind of sand used and an endless variation of cake-like tones is possible depending upon the source of the sand. Jean-François and Marc have come from their home in Belême (an hour and a quarter round trip) no less than ten times to verify the final color of the house (which is empty but soon to go on the market). They have never been satisfied until this week. The workmen have been trying every sand pit in the locale and were finally able to create the color which approximated what "the boys" (as we call them) had in their minds. This has delayed the project by several weeks, but to excellent effect. The scaffolding has finally been removed and the view out our window now, (once upon a bland dirty tan building with faux cinder blocks painted on the bottom half, as if the real ones aren't ugly enough!) has become apricot. Mme Geudet, the baker's wife and arbiter of all things in the village declared that she was pleased, but did note that it was regrettable that the nurse didn't use the opportunity to resurface her exterior as well. That would have, after all, improved Mme Geudet's view as well. 

The village is going through a certain amount of publically funded improvements. The stone stairs have all been rebuilt, and Celine, the hairdresser, had her building resurfaced a few months ago. The color there turned out a much darker ochre yellow; less pleasing to the local population. In my opinion, however, all these natural colors are beautiful and they weather and mellow with age. I love the variation. The boulangerie, visible from our window just behind the new apricot is a light lemon yellow. They look very good together.

***

Mid-week, we found ourselves with a two-day hole in our calendar, so we took a trip to Paris to see the grandson and stock up on a few specialty art supplies and exotic food items. I also had a sudden desire (it comes over me so seldom) to do some creative cooking. It's particularly enjoyable to do that with Emily. She and I were both long-time Gourmet Magazine loyalists and thus devastated when they suddenly halted publication earlier in the year. Our remaining subscriptions were finished out with issues of Bon Appetite, which frankly both of us consider a much inferior substitute. The "Last Word" in Gourmet gave recipes for various sauces, butters, condiments or vinegars. A keeper every month! In Bon Appetite you get a recipe from a movie star on the last page. Can I care what some famous person rustles up when it's the cook's night off? I do have to admit, however, that the section where readers write in for recipes from their favorite restaurants has resulted in a few extraordinary discoveries. For our guests I routinely follow one recipe I got in my first replacement issue – mushroom cakes served on a bed of avocado gaspacho with a red pepper coulis on top. Makes me hungry just writing about it! This month I found a recipe for chili rellenos stuffed with goat cheese and mushrooms, not to mention one for a cocktail with gin, lemon and grapefruit juices, jasmine tea and limoncello. I imagined a cooking party with Emily, who is quite an excellent and dedicated chef. To make these kinds of recipes one does have to be in the big city, as they contain ingredients impossible to locate at our local markets. In Emily's neighborhood one can find some fabulous ethnic food stores, especially Japanese, Turkish, Israeli and Indian. Regrettably there isn't much in the way of Mexican food or supplies available in France, even in Paris, so we were reduced to visiting Istanbul Market down the road from Emily's to find some anaheim chili substitutes. They worked very well indeed. We had an extended cooking extravaganza and a late but very satisfying dinner together. The second night we ordered take-out.

  The results of Bobo making the mistake of leaving his toast unguarded

We spent a day in Paris center going to my favorite art supply stores. Relma, very close to the Place St. Michel is located in an old Parisian store front. It sells specialty items for book binders. There you find several hundred choices of marbleized papers, leather in every grade and color, wooden book presses in various sizes and beautiful tools for hand binding and stamping. I bought a scalpel there several years ago, it cuts so much more precisely than an xacto knife, and I was finally able to restock my blades. It's not possible to buy them at a pharmacy. I now have a lifetime supply. We walked from there up the quai to Sennelier where they sell more ordinary art supplies, but which offers the art tool addict just as sensual an experience. One enters the old shop by way of a glass door which faces the Tuileries Gardens across the Seine. Inks, pastels, tubes of paints and brushes of every size and shape line the walls from floor to ceiling. Negotiating your way through narrow aisles, jostling with other customers trying to make their own way is a delightful experience. The choices are boggling. After my modest shopping spree was over Rick noted that I seem to find art stores particularly nurturing. It's true. It was a great day. We rounded it off with tapas at a Spanish restaurant near the Jardin de Luxembourg and a visit to a gallery in Montparnasse where they currently have a Chas Laborde exhibition. We walked the whole route. One of my favorite things to do in Paris, is just walk.

Jos and Emily's cherry tree is laden with fruit this year. They cover the ground under the tree and all the neighbors come help themselves. If Quinn is hungry he simply patters outside and picks one up from the ground. He takes a bite and then hands it to you. You remove the pit while he patiently waits, and then you give it back to him to finish.

  

 a good year for cherries

***

Monique invited us for a Sunday barbecue as the weather has been really heavenly this week and it was a perfect day to sit outside in her secret little terrace garden. Monique lives in a charming house a few steps away. She mans the front desk at the local sawmill, which is owned by her son. She also has two children living on Reunion, so she travels quite frequently. It is extremely pleasant in her lush walled garden. Jonathan and Renata were in town as well as Christine, so the six of us sat at Monique's beautifully-laid table and feasted on five sorts of entrées, a huge platter of four kinds of barbecued meat, potatoes and beets from Jonathan's garden and finally two desserts. Such a meal is a three to four hour affair with lots of lively conversation all around and several bottles of wine. It was a delicious note to end the week on.

***

This week brought people from Belgium, Canada, Germany, Israel, Spain, France and exotically, Ukraine. Who would have guessed that all the world would pass right through the center of Montmirail?

 

from the garden

Métiers d'Art

Last weekend we had a stand at an art festival in La Perrière, a lovely village not far from our home. It is the first time we have participated in something like this. Art markets are quite common in France, and not just at Christmas time. People enjoy seeing handmade items and these events can be quite well attended. They expected 1500 people to visit the one we were part of. In June there is a Marché d'Art where painters, sculptors and fine artists of every persuasion bring their work. This entire little village is crowded with stands and parking is held in large fields. It's almost like a rock concert or a ball game. When we attended last summer we found it phenomenal that so many artists and spectators came to this litte out-of-the-way village to participate. When we went to the tourist office to gather more information for possible participation in next year's event, they told us that in September, they hold another marché, but this time for crafts people, rather than fine artists. We felt that we probably fall somewhere in the middle of those two categories, but decided to give it a go for the September event. Certainly the crafts market was not so well attended as the June event, but it was lots of fun nonetheless and we met some interesting other crafts people. The woman on one side of us made painted porcelain jewelry. On the other side the woman made theatrical costumes. There were several wood workers, furniture makers,people doing trompe l'oeil, potters, clever toy makers, jewelers of every description and some embroidery artists. It was a very diverse group of people. We received some publicity as two newspapers featured our photo and wrote up a bit about us for their local circulation. We weren't the only English-speakers featured at the market, but we were the only Americans. I guess we're a novelty and so make a good focus for an article. Rick had a lot of people interested in our photogravure process. The idea at the festival was to give demonstrations of our crafts. We brought our little letterpress and ran off some cards which we gave away to children. We did sell some prints, but our books and cards were the biggest hit. La Perrière itself is a really charming village, well worth a visit if you're ever in the neighborhood. We have enjoyed lunch or tea at the chic Maison d'Horbe many times. It is a magical place, overgrown with vines, alive with bubbling fountains and birds, richly decorated with statuary and potted plants. Tea is served in mismatched antique tea cups with antique silver spoons. They have a boutique with a gourmet food section, selling their cakes, creams and jams and an antique section where they sell all manner of little knick knacks. We have several photos of La Perrière up on our website. La Perrière is perched on a hill and the view of the Perche countryside all around is unspoilt. The view from most of the residences is spectacular. Since the Perche is close to Paris, lots of Parisians have second homes in this area. La Perrière is a particular favorite, because of its charm and location. It makes the village prosperous and well-tended. As we left town after our weekend as artist/merchants, we took a new road and discovered this pretty château just outside town. It's a pleasure to discover something new around an unexplored bend in the road.