It’s good to be home but I am already dreaming and planning for the workshops in France in July 2009. I’ve just posted the 2009 info and hope you will consider joining me in the future.  Its a very special part of France and I would love to share it with you!

I had many weeks there without a studio to work in- while we were camping etc.- but I did do a daily sketch of something that I saw that struck me design or art-wise and it was a good discipline. This small sketchbook has provided me with not only a great remembrance of what I saw and did, but a possible resource for new work. I’ll keep you posted on that.  Anxious to get back to making things as soon as I crawl out from under the pile of mail etc.

I decided to assign myself a photography project this summer so I would take some different pictures than my usual obsession with sunflowers, gargoyles and other architectural delights here in France. My subject was Mimes.

At many of the music and street festivals there are fabulously costumed mimes who change their pose as you drop a few coins in their box.  I find them fascinating and fun to photograph. I captured these two mimes in Avignon.

And one special photograph (I’ll upload at some point) I caught the mime putting on his makeup at a cafe while having coffee and a cigarette.

Home soon, and I am really looking forward to some time in the studio, hopefully following through on inspiration from the la Belle France!

Les Cammazes is a little village about fifteen minutes from Durfort and I usually try to take the workshop classes there.  They carry all types of pottery– decorative and practical.  Beatifully painted tableware and those hardy (and heavy) rust or mustard colored cooking pots to make cassoulet and other French delights.

Outside there is large garden art which is a delight to roam through.  La Cascade has a large stone pineapple on the gate leading down to the river.  I love to photograph the many statues to use as transfers or inspiration for figures.

I’ll be posting updated info about the 2009 workshops in France in about 2 weeks and hope you will consider joining me!

I’m going to Gaillac tomorrow which is about forty-five minutes away. The drive there is through rolling hills of sunflowers and fields of hay and corn. Besides being a wonderful wine producing area, the town itself is an architectural delight.

Beautiful timbered houses with windowboxes spilling over with geraniums, great peeling-paint and colorful doors (I love deteriorating surfaces) and something I especially love- the painted walls and garage doors that some villages seem to specialize in.

I’m nearing the end of my camping trip in France, which has been a delight.  On the way to Marseilles is this wild wonder!  It has been created over several years by a local woman, an outsider artist (called Art Brut in France).  Apparently the inside is as decorated as the outside but one can not visit the house.  However she does have a studio where she works- we stopped by but she was not working today.

In Aix en Provence there are wonderful fountains around every corner.  Its been very very very hot so in addition to providing great photo ops I have been experiencing the joy of cool water on the back of my neck!