More Field Trippin'

Tuesday evening, my Writing About Place class and as many extra students as fit in the two transit vans made the thirty-minute drive over to Gordes, down into a valley where the Senanque Abbey sits nestled among trees beginning to turn gold and orange and red, alongside faded lavender fields that the monks cultivate in the summer. Every day at 18h00 (6:00 p.m.), the monks walk into the chapel for evening prayer, called Vespers.

Seven monks in white robes and socks and sandals filed in and took their places in front of the small altar of the minimalist chapel with its worn, gray stone, vaulted ceiling and unassuming, unstained glass windows. One statue of the Madonna and child stood aside from the altar, which had a stone crucifix and two small arrangements of thin branches with orange and yellow leaves.
When the monks sang, their voices filled the chapel and rung from the stone walls and ceilings. It was all in Latin and French, and the only part I recognized was "Kyrie." It was beautiful.

About a half hour later, the monks set their hymnals down and filed back out of the chapel through a side door. Some of the other visitors followed, and the eighteen American students stood awkwardly for a minute. Two of our more confident students walked piously through that side door along with the others. The rest of us started to follow, wondering if this were an exit or a second part of the ceremony. A balding monk with a white beard stepped in front of us and said something in French. He may or may not have been telling us not to follow, so we turned around and left from the door we came in originally, back out into the courtyard next to the path to the parking lot. The two pious students were nowhere to be found. So we waited.

The beginning of autumn colors were absolutely beautiful, and for the first time on this trip, I kicked myself for not having my camera. It made me want to sew small squares of green, gold, orange, and red fabric into a loose pile of a pattern, then quilt over it with stitching in the shape of tree branches.

Eventually the two missing girls came back with their extra blessing. They had accidentally followed into a silent, personal prayer room, and had taken a few minutes to muster up the courage to try to find their way out. Finally all back together, we boarded back up into the transit vans and made our way out of the valley and back to Lacoste, the Writing About Place students thoughtful about what they would write for their Vespers prompt assignment.

The next morning, the four Business and Professional Writing students tagged along with the Travel Photography class to Roussillon. We wandered around the ochre mines (ochre is used for pigment in paint and whatnot) and forests for about an hour, then met up in the town at a café for class.

SCAD students and professors at the ochre mines in Roussillon

An average view of the Luberon Valley, taken in Roussillon.

After Business and Professional Writing class at a cafe in Roussillon.

viva la dainty

I might as well add a permanent closing tag to these posts:
SCAD Lacoste FTW.

Antique Ribbon Pairings

See also Upon Returning from Paris for picture pairings with cotton patchwork fabric.
All these pictures were taken in Aix-en-Provence except the last two, which are in the Sacré Coeur in Paris.

The ribbon is from Ruth. She also let me borrow the book French General - Treasured Notions: Inspiration and Craft Projects Using Vintage Beads, Buttons, Ribbons, and Trim from Tinsel Trading Company. ("Notions" are beads, buttons, ribbon, trim, et cetera.) On Saturday afternoon, I sat out on the terrace and read and ate macarons and one of the village cats walked up at sat next to me. On a related note, students and professors have been waking up with Jean-Clawed on the foot of their bed. Lacoste ftw.

Joyeux Anniversaire Weekend

coffee in the atelier

Yesterday was my twentieth birthday, and the whole weekend was wonderful. It started on Thursday afternoon (SCAD doesn't have classes on Friday, so while there's still a lot of studio work to be done, Thursday after class is the beginning of our weekend) with the perfect photography job.

Ruth is from Ireland, but she's been living here on the edge of Lacoste with her French husband and two-year-old son for over a year. She makes beautiful jewelry from antique ribbon and silk, much of it from family archives. Because she'll be opening an Etsy shop next month, photographs were in order, and I jumped on the opportunity. Marissa came with me on Thursday afternoon to wrist-model the cuffs, then we got to stay for dinner (ratatouille, beef, rice, and a cheese course). On Saturday afternoon, I returned to photograph the cuffs without a model, and drink my fill of mint tea with honey.

Ruth's cuffs in her atelier

bracelets Ruth made from antique ribbon

A preview of Ruth's handmade cuffs, which will go on sale in her online shop on November 7.

 

Ruth gave me some treasure to make my own jewelry (I mostly make brooches, which I can make with smaller ribbon samples): a box of antique ribbon and silk and several pages from old sample books that salesmen would take to shops, or that shops and warehouses would use to order their supplies of ribbon. I've taken pictures and will be doing more picture pairings with them, so stay tuned for those.

On Friday, all the SCAD students spent the day in Aix-en-Provence, a medium-sized city full of fountains and shops. I went to an antique consignment store, where I found a few small, inexpensive brooch-making materials, plus some beautiful furniture that I wish I could buy. Upholstery is so lovely.

In the afternoon, we visited the Cite du Livre - in what used to be a match factory, it's now a series of libraries with an art gallery, where Herboriser is currently on display. It's a series of illustrations of all the plants mentioned in the writings of Camus, done by a friend of his, alongside Camus' original manuscripts.

coffee in Aix-en-Provence

Sunday morning, I went to Isle sur la Sorgue where there is a weekly antique market. Mostly I watched the mallards in the Sorgue river, plus I got an apple, and some thread for my brooches. The afternoon was relaxing; I took a nap. Then in the evening, a group of us students walked up the hill past the chateau of the Marquis de Sade to a limestone quarry where there is a firepit. My friends Ben, Nicole and Serena had gathered wood that afternoon, and Ben had marshmallows and some kind of French cookies with chocolate on them, so we had French s'mores and it was the perfect birthday evening.

Third Installment of Paris: Cathedrals and Catacombs and... Carts

Because alliteration is important, I guess. The cart comes with the bit about the Louvre. I'm also throwing the L'Opera Garnier in here, but that doesn't have a C word.

Though I have no pictures I think are worthwhile from the Notre Dame, I did visit it and go inside. Since we were staying in the Latin Quarter, Notre Dame was a sort of base point for navigating the city (it is also where "kilometer zero" is, the point from which all distances in Paris are measured).

I do like these pictures I took in La Sainte-Chapelle.

 

I visited Thursday morning, and bought a ticket for a piano and cello concert of sonatas by Beethoven and Brahms in the chapel that night. The stained glass windows were less majestic without sunlight, of course, but the ornate gold was lit beautifully and glowing around the two musicians. It was an hour of magnificence.

The Louvre

 After seeing the classic Louvre pieces like the Winged Victory, the Mona Lisa, and so on (I admit there's only so much of that I can take in among a crowd in a couple hours), Marissa and I found each other then found an empty upstairs wing to sit for a while and breathe. Wandering around, we found things I enjoyed even more: tapestries, "art objects" like small religious pieces, pocket watches, music boxes, dainty china patterns and not dainty pocket knives, and the apartments of Napoleon III, which were lavish and ornate and had those wonderful velvety fabric-upholstered walls that I love so much.

We spent a few minutes in the gardens outside before leaving the Louvre, and that's when I saw it. For the first time in real life, I saw one of the first birds I admired in my first bird field guide (I own several): a magpie. Marissa thinks it's funny that I get excited about magpies, because apparently she's seen them all over the place in her travels, and is pretty sure they're actually nuisances, but that's true of a lot of lovely animals.

Regardless, I tried to get closer to this one for a picture, but it ran (not flew - ran) away from me and through some bushes. I tried to follow, but I lost it. I did, however, find this shopping cart. Inside the bushes of the Tuileries.

I actually saw someone else dainty chinning on this statue before me, then two other groups followed suit after me. viva la dainty

On Friday I went to the catacombs: mass graves of bodies that were originally buried in a number of other cemeteries, but because they died of the plague and Paris' water system was getting infected, they were moved hundreds of years ago to this underground (and under sewer and under everything else) maze. In the 1800s, the bones were "artfully arranged" by a French eccentric and opened to the public. It's chilling. About six million bodies are piled there, and they all look the same.

muerta la dainty
(absolutely irreverent. sry)

After the catacombs, Marissa and I took the Metro (I've reached intermediate status as a Metro navigator, at least) to L'Opera Garnier to wander around in some ornate golden stuff for a while.

The stage, not yet ready for a show.

 Saturday morning before the train back to Lacoste, I went to Sacré Coeur at the top of Montmartre.

With that, I declare Reason #8 Why Studying in Lacoste is Wonderful: Paris.

Second Installment of Paris: Fabric

Epiphany I had in Paris: I need to study fibers, not photography as a minor.

The times when I felt the most like I could live in and enjoy the moment were when I didn't have my camera with me (luckily Marissa is just the opposite and put my camera to good use). I do enjoy taking pictures, and I got some images I'm proud of that I'll be posting soon, but take a look at the "Upon Returning from Paris" post and you'll see what I mean. Mostly Paris made me want to make things with fabric and ribbon and take frequent breaks to write in my notebook or sit with some coffee and read.

I found some wonderful fabric while I was in Paris and I can't wait to start making things.

Le Rouvray was a favorite; it's a quiet shop in the Latin Quarter where the shopkeeper spoke English and quickly caught on to my taste in colors and patterns and could point out fabrics she knew I would love, and she called me "my dear" and gave me good prices. 

The streets just below the hill in Montmartre, southeast of the Sacré Coeur, were full of excellent shops as well, with every kind of fabric in every kind of atmosphere a shop could have. It was a challenge not to buy everything in sight; I mostly bought quarter meters of cotton patchwork fabric because I'll be making lots of brooches to sell at Vernissage (SCAD Lacoste's end-of-quarter student art exhibition). Here are some of my purchases. Aren't they pretty?

 

This looks just like some wallpaper that used to be in my house when I was little.

This fabric cost one Euro and has since been turned into this journal case for an instructional writing assignment.

I got these brooches from an almost-too-good-to-handle shop in Montmartre called Moline Mercerie. They remind me of old costume jewelry I've found in my grandparents' house, but cleaner and nicer looking (and so inexpensive!). With a square of fabric behind it on the collar of a heavy coat, one of these will look lovely.

Buying them was another instance of an interesting pattern in Paris. My French is not very good, so I tried to stay quiet most of the time. These brooches happened to be kept behind the cashier, so I had to give myself away as a foreigner. One of my friends who spent a semester in Europe last year said the easiest way to spot a group of Americans is if they all look like they're different nationalities. My friend Marissa and I both happen to be the same height with short blonde hair, so when it becomes clear we're not French, the next guesses are usually, "Denmark? Holland? Poland?" asked with a smile. But when we say "États-Unis," the tone changes. They want to know which part of the US. Maybe we could redeem ourselves a little if we're from New York. But Marissa's from Florida and I'm from Texas. They don't act hostile or anything (maybe playful joking-hostile), but it's as if we're not endearing like we would have been if we were fellow Europeans.

I didn't mind it as much as I found it interesting. A Greek crêpe stand owner, after finding out I'm from Texas, said, "Teks-ahs! George Boosh!" and pointed to one of the paninis in the window. "Tek-san! Beef!" I got crêpes from him a couple times after that, and he greeted me as "Teks-ahs!" each time. I didn't mind. The crêpes were delicious.

Okay, do you see the price on that one? Five Euro for three metres of nice, thick fabric.
I think the fabric was heavier than the books in my bag on the way back from Paris.