Thursday, June 1, 2017

Today we leave for France!

It hardly seems possible, or real, after many months of preparation and anticipation. We will arrive in Paris tomorrow morning, spend the night there, and head to Flers on Sunday where our host will meet us at the train station and bring us to our gite in Athis de L'Orne. There we will get settled in and begin the process of finishing up Jess's amazing piece, called Transatlantic, and you will begin to see images that we both will be posting here on this blog, and hers, and on instagram and facebook. What a different world than 1971-1972 when I last spent an extended time in France, as a teenager, with a host family, studying for the year in Rennes. We'll be very close to Rennes and I intend to get there to visit and see how it has changed and how it has stayed the same. Plus ca change plus c'est la meme chose, right? The land of crepes! Sweet and savory. Besides being helpful to Jessica, I have a small part to play in the overall installation and have been painting long lengths of clouds on Yupo, which is not my usual m.o. but it has been instructive and fun. We'll see how they mesh with the sculptural components that Jess has spent months carving from basswood as well as generating digitally on paper for the sculptural installation she has conceived for the residency. A bientot!