Last day of the drawing festival

We couldn't let the day go by without seeing another installation of the Festival du Dessin.  Today's venue was le Musee Departmental Arles Antique.  It featured the work of Colette-Renee Portal, a French artist.

The work was presented in two ways.  Upstairs, India ink drawings with watercolors that told the story of La Vie d'une Reine (The Life of a Queen) were displayed.  These drawings (from 1959) were all used in her book, of the same name, which follows the life of a Queen ant.  She was very attentive to the details of ant society.  Charming and very interesting.

Leaving for her wedding

Tending the nursery

Tending a flock of blue aphids

An invasion

Saving the eggs

The second way that her work was displayed was that her pencil drawings with watercolors from Pompei (made in the late 20th century into the 21st century) were displayed near Roman ruins from about the time of the eruption of Vesuvius, that were collected in Arles.  Interesting juxtaposition.

Market day

Always an interesting experience.  Saturday is the big market day in Arles.  The main street and many adjacent parking lots are turned over to vendors hawking food and dry goods.  Locals do their serious shopping at the Saturday market.  Tourists enjoy it as well.  Most everything is artfully presented.

Here are a few of the things that I saw at the market this morning.

Dates

Spices

Paella

Fruit

Early artichokes

Clothing

Booths and shoppers in the main street

Our local canal path

This morning, we rented bikes at the train station and rode along the Rhone River to the Antiquities Museum, then headed south (and a little east), following the Canal de Navigation d'Arles a Bouc. We have ridden on this canal path many times and enjoy its proximity to farmland and nature.  We heard many more birds than we saw. Some of their calls were quite lovely (including the cuckoo).  The birds that we saw included quite a few magpies, which are always fun to see.  Also, swifts and swallows, kites and terns, and one black-crowned night heron.  It's always lovely to escape the roar of cars and cities.

The vegetation bordering the canal path was quite tall and included an array of grasses, dandelions, red poppies, blooming thistles, wild fennel and fig trees.  Yellow irises were blooming at the edge of the canal.

Get outside!

Another day with drawings

 As the Fesival du Dessin is rapidly approaching its end, we spent another morning looking at installations.  First, we went to the Chapelle du Museon Arlaten for an installation of the works of Jean-Michel Folon, a Belgian artist who was born in 1934.  Many were simple ink drawings, but his choice of media changed through his career.  Many were funny or thought provoking. Most were untitled.

"Lineart" 
(Depicting the source of the wood used for a painting of the trees that were cut down)

"Co-dependence"

Untitled

An illustration for the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights 1988

The next venue was Espace Van Gogh, the hospital where Van Gogh was cared for after he cut off his ear in 1888.  My favorite artist in this installation was Philippe Mohlitz, a French artist born in 1941.  He was an engraver, and his level of detail was amazing.  Many surprises lurked in his pieces.

"The discovery of Plutonium"

"Southern border"

Enjoy what you encounter.

Our first ride in the south

This morning, after a little rain, we headed to Aigues Mortes and rented bikes to ride to le Grau du Roi.  We have ridden along the same lovely canal bike path several times a year, for at least 6 or 8 years.  But today was a little different, because it was barricaded for repairs.  Nevertheless, we saw a few other cyclists had ridden around the barricades, so we followed them.  This involved riding or pushing the bikes through some really wet mud.  It was messy.  On our way south, most of the workers were on a break, but we encountered several on our way north.  They are rebuilding some culverts and installing new water (and maybe sewer lines).  There was no heavy equipment working, and we didn't interfere with anything the workers were doing.

This is what the trail looked like:

The brackish pond along the trail was very calm, with flamingoes near a small island not too far away.

The other reward of the ride was fresh seafood lunch along the canal, just before it enters the sea.

The view from our table

A day with some art

This morning, we purchased tickets to the Festival du Dessin (Drawing Festival) in Arles, then proceeded to view two installations.  

First stop was at Palais de l'Archeveche on the east side of the Place de la Republique to view a collection  of landscapes, made using pencil, charcoal, stone, and/or crayon, monochromatically.  The most interesting pieces were done by Francoise Perronno, a French woman born in 1970.  She used crayon on glass.  Some of her pieces were 3-dimensional, binding 5 or 6 glass layers together with lead.  Others were done on a single piece of glass with light projected through them.  The glass pieces were rather small, but the projections through them to the wall behind were much larger and quite impressive to view.

A wall of projected pieces

Next stop was across the Place de la Republique at Eglise Sainte-Anne.  This installation presented drawings from the collection of Antoine de Galbert.  These were wide-ranging in content, and some were quite colorful.

Eglise Sainte-Anne

Furies by Damien Deroubaix

Two walls full of the collection

Take the time to appreciate whatever you may encounter.

Bonjour

Our first full day in France was not without a little excitement.

We rented bikes at the neighborhood bike shop and rode along the Seine down to the Tour Eiffel.  Yesterday was 81 degrees and clear.  Today the temperature rose to about 75, but it was very windy and clouds moved in.  Rain was forecast for the evening, but we heard thunder on our ride back.  Shortly after our return to the hotel, an "isolated thunderstorm" dumped quarter-sized hail outside our windows.  Ah printemps (spring).

Along the river, we ate lunch on a moored boat next to Pont Alexandre III.  Here are a few photos of the bridge.

Stay tuned for more.