Between her busy art gallery (Artful Journey in Peoria, Illinois) and my Shingles, it has been a long time since I’ve sat down for a ZOOM art session with Ruthie Inman in Illinois.
So when we finally got together this week, we yakked and cut and collaged until I was totally worn out! Ruthie had chosen a very fitting collage project.
She had us building a small accordion book to glue into an existing art journal. I am still writing most days in the Journal I was keeping on our France trip, and always welcome the chance to add something interesting.
We measured some light-to-medium card stock about 3 by 5 inches, and joined 5 pieces together by their one inch flaps.
Since it was going in my France Journal, I chose bits and pieces that reminded me of the gardens, museums, restaurants and Emergency Rooms we had visited.
I used quite a few pages from Jennifer’s donated art calendar, adding them to ‘failed’ Gelli prints and roll-off papers, bits of an old Time/Life book on medicine, and pages from falling apart French language Agatha Christie mysteries. When I’m totally happy with it, I’ll stick it in my Journal.
I just love sticking bits of nonsense together to tell a story!
Now that we are having shorter stays in each city, we are having less of a chance to get to know them well, like we did Lyon. We are seeing the highlights.
And our last day was full of them! Auntie Bridgett and I wanted a real French lunch out, and Chez Mamie looked fun. (Chez Mamie means “Grandma’s Place.”) She must be one of those fun Grandmas!
Chez Mamie is in Place du Trinité, which has this incredible fountain of three caryatids holding a large, flowing basin of water. In the heat, they were the most comfortable imaginary creatures around.
It was a fun, interesting place, and delicious, as well. I had a canard confit, a duck leg cooked until it falls off the bone, and roasted potatoes. Bridgett enjoyed a nice white fish and a yummy peppery cream sauce.
There was also a city wide music festival going on, with all sorts of groups out playing in the streets and main squares. Everyone sounded wonderful, but I didn’t get any good pictures… I was either too far away or looking at everyone’s back.
Around 8:30, Bridgett and I headed down to the Garonne River to see the sunset. (Grandpa Nelson had been done in by the 95F temperature and opted out).
The crowds along the river were big and getting bigger by the minute, folks out to celebrate the Solstice, hear the music, see the sunset, and hang out with friends.
It was lovely. We stood and listened and watched the sparkles on the river as the sun dissolved into a cloud bank.
And then we headed home. Thanks, Toulouse! You were wonderful! Really hot, but wonderful.
I have managed to catch a cold, and am stuck inside for a day or two here in Toulouse, feeling lousy. I’m not going to try and write much. Instead, I will show you some of the street art from Lyon, Montpellier, Arles, and Toulouse.
I don’t know how much there originally was to this poster. What she’s wearing is called a Liberty Cap, or Phrygian Cap. I think she’s fierce, there on a wall by the Roman Arena in Arles.
Montpellier has some talented collage artists running around!
I took this picture for Ruthie… Lyon really likes giraffes!
We’ve only been here in Toulouse for a few days, but I found these odd bits of cast metal window hardware. Someone has decided their clown faces needed highlighting. Weird, huh?
More for the outside world, tomorrow (fingers crossed).
Another transit adventure! “Since we’ve come all this way,” as Bridgett is fond of saying, we decided to take a day trip from Montpellier to Arles. It only takes an hour or so, and since we were traveling without our giant luggage, we had a quick, easy trip.
Just kidding!
Our train from Montpellier was so late getting to Avignon that we missed our connection and had to wait for the next train, an hour later. Well, heck.
Except that the medieval wall of Avignon was DIRECTLY across the street from the train station! So, off we went.
Just inside, we found a cathedral (which was being used as the Tourism Office) and the connected botanical garden, which was being watered and cared for in the rapidly rising temperatures.
We enjoyed a stroll under the big leafy plane trees (which, I’m discovering, make every city more livable), some art I still need to research, and then it was time to head back to the station. Arles was just one stop down the line.
Montpellier is only about five miles from the Mediterranean Sea, and once Grandpa Nelson got the transit figured out, we had an adventure day.
We caught the Number 3 tram south. Montpellier has pretty much the same ticket-buying machines as Lyon, and I was able to help this fellow with his purchase. Bright reflections play havoc with screens!
We enjoyed the views of the city as the tram wound through business areas out to the suburbs, which were filled with parking lots, fast traffic and big box stores with names like Flunch and But.
Yep. Flunch. But.
But, of course, things can’t go absolutely perfectly the first time, and we ended up on the wrong leg of the tram line, in a place called Latte Centre. After a loud, barely coherent conversation with a bus driver, we realized our mistake, backtracked, and got on the right leg to get us to Perols, by the Etaing de l’Or.
An Etaing is a lagoon, and this part of the coast has lots of them, formed by barrier islands. They are shallow, buggy wetlands between the mainland and the actual beach.
At the end of the tram line, we needed to catch a bus…. But which bus? There was a lot of thinking and looking at maps. Figuring things out together is something we do pretty well. The bus arrived, Grandpa’s E-ticket worked, and we got to Palavas Les Flots, a little seaside village.
It felt a lot like Hermosa Beach, California, with small, square houses on tiny lots, all set along a narrow road running parallel to the beach. Towards the center of town, taller hotels and apartments march along by Cafés, restaurants and souvenir shops. Nearer the harbor, fishing boats tie up, waiting for the next days’ work.
Among the delightful surprises of the day was this statue of aviator and author Antoine St. Exupery and his most beloved creation, The Little Prince. The level of artistry was a bit disappointing, but, as the Prince understood, “what is essential is invisible to the eyes.”
We found Restaurant Barisano and enjoyed a restful, tasty lunch, and then went to put our feet in the Sea!
Being on a warm beach reminded Grandpa and me of when we were dating, and it was lovely just to sit and watch seagulls, kids playing, and boats coming and going.
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We walked, snacked, looked at shops and one odd little church, and eventually realized that we had all had too much sun and ought to head home. The bus and tram got us back to town, where Auntie Bridgett got dinner started and we all lived to tell the tale.
Wandering through the Fabre Museum in Montpellier, the portraits were fun to look get to know on a personal basis. Their life stories, which I looked up if I could, were reflected in their eyes.
The other type of paintings I enjoyed were the modern pieces that focus on pattern. The problem is, I always forget to record the title and artist of these sort of paintings, so I can’t go look them up or find them again.
I like to try and find the balance that the artist was looking for, how the colors are related, and what I can learn from it. My quilts are much like these pieces, with blocks of different colors and textures working together to make an harmonious whole.
And then there is this piece, which is a very abstracted , but still representational. See the houses? The clouds? The boats?And the woman? This is a fun kind of painting… part riddle, part artwork.
Yesterday was predicted to be even hotter than usual, in the high 80s, so we chose to spend the day inside with art. Museums are always careful to protect their possessions, and we get the benefit!
The Fabre Museum here in Montpellier is housed in a combination of buildings from 1825, 1952, 1978, 2007 and 2019. Seeing all its galleries is a delightfully maze-like experience.
As we walked and stared and whispered, I tried to notice which kinds of art attracted me and which kinds I could give a glance and happily move away from.
Turns out, I like people. Portraits, formal or informal, whose eyes look right at you, catch my heart. I want to see into their eyes and get to know them. Elizabeth Denis, painted by her husband Maurice Denis, looks so happy and loved that she makes me glow.
And this little fellow, Albert Marquet, painted in 1904 by Charles Camoin, look so unassuming and gentle that I want to buy him a cup of tea and hear about his day.
And then there is Alfred Bruyas, who seemed to be everywhere! Bridgett took four pictures of his portraits once she recognized him, and there were many more.
A handsome fellow, to be sure, but more than a dozen portraits? Who was this guy? Using my broken French, I asked a friendly and animated museum guard… “Qui était cet homme?” The guard was happy to explain that Alfred Bruyas was an aristocrat, with more money than he knew what to do with.
He had wanted to be an artist but didn’t have the talent, so he chose to support other artists by commissioning portraits from them. Lots and lots of portraits, including one of himself as Jesus. Apparently he saw himself as a martyr, sacrificing his wealth for art. Hmmmmm.
So, some portraits catch my heart more than others. I guess using one’s inherited wealth for self-agrandissement disguised as charity is not a new thing.
Anyway, I love where my mind wanders in Art Museums!
We are settling in to Montpellier pretty well. It is hotter than we are used to, so we try and get all our exploring done by 3:00 in the afternoon, then rest and do art during the hottest part of the day.
We started with the Travel Advisor list of “Things to do in Montpellier”, and found that most of them are right in our neighborhood!
The Place du Comédie is a wide open public square, surrounded by shops and cafés and with a fountain in the middle. Called The Three Graces, it has three marble women dancing above a lumpy rock where some marble cherubs are hiding, which is above squirting fountains and a pool. As you can see from the picture, the buildings surrounding the square are classic French architecture and very pretty.
Following the public square around a corner, we found the Esplanade Charles de Gaulle, which is a wide pedestrian walkway, shaded by dozens of plane trees. Benches line the area and fun blurpy fountains squirt up out of the sidewalk. It is a fun place to hang out on a hot afternoon, staying cool and being with friends.
In the oldest part of the city, which was built in the 1400s, the streets are still laid out in their higgledy-piggledy curves, not a grid pattern like we usually do today. I think this is what Paris must have looked like before Baron Haussmann did his urban renewal in the 1800s, creating the wide boulevards.
We have seen lots of places we will got back to and explore this book and toy store looks intriguing….
And the fine arts museum.
We’re expecting thunderstorms and heavy rain tomorrow, which will make a nice break from all this heat! So we’ll be inside, doing art and writing instead of galavanting all over.
After a long day of towing our giant suitcases across Lyon, onto trains and boosting them into overhead shelves, a train ride that included meeting Bianco the traveling cat and his two dads, then lifting the bags down and hauling them a few blocks through sunny Montpellier, we are settling into our new city.
Montpellier has a very different feel from Lyon. Hotter and more humid, of course, but also more casual, less business-oriented. Almost nothing is open on Sunday, and Monday is about half-open. It’s a smaller city with slow-moving ground level trams instead of a zippy underground metro.
Walking around, I use the GPS on my phone a lot.
The twisty narrow streets get me turned around and I don’t know I’m lost until it dawns on me that I’ve seen that fountain before.
Close to our apartment, we have seen parts of the city walls built in the 1400s, statues erected in the 1700s, and contemporary Banksy murals, only slightly ‘defaced’.
Once I get my bearings and organize my thoughts, I’ll tell you about the history and life of this city.
When I travel, I walk miles every day and take way too many photographs. And since I know I won’t remember everything, I write and draw and collage into my travel journal. Here is the page that shows our train ride journey from Charles de Gaul Airport to Lyon.
I try to write with accuracy about where we go and what we see, and how I feel about it. But my art …. Is somewhat less accurate.
And that’s okay! Sometimes I work from my photos, trying to make things look just right…
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And sometimes it’s more of an impressionist collage sort of thing, like this page filled with coffee bags.
And MAPS!! I love maps, and they help me make sense of what I saw and where I was. Our long hike up the Croix-Rousse neighborhood ended up looking like a board game.
And then I feel the need to sketch some more. It’s my book, after all, isn’t it?
The problem (is it a problem? Or an opportunity?) is that my Journal is filling up fast. I will need another in a week or so. Do I get the same size? This one is 8.5 by 11 inches, and I like having the big pages to play with. Since I don’t carry it with me, it’s not really cumbersome.
I’m sure Bridgett will help me find an art store that will help me solve my dilemma.
Dear Liza 