See the top menu (just above here) for the full Page write-up on my recent land art residency for Les Phonies Bergères – it was a fairly short but intense experience of living close to the land in a small close-knit community in the French Pyrenees.
Les Phonies Bergères was a wonderful festival of arts, words and music, involving almost everybody living in the locality – as well as local groups and institutions and invited artists and performers. The Festival was set this year in the small village of Accous deep in the Vallée d’Aspe in the Pyrenées Atlantiques. The theme: ‘habiter’: to live, to dwell, to be at home….
Accous – Main Street
The artists’ trail, as part of the Festival, was to be along part of the ancient pilgrim route, le Chemin de St. Jacques de la Compostelle (Camino de Santiago).
My account is drawn from notes scribbled as I worked in my mountainside field in all weathers… It is impossible to tell everything about the whole event – only my own immediate day to day experiences and impressions – but at the end, you’ll find some links to further info, including all the artists’ websites.
There were five of us artists-in-residence: myself, Elena Saracino (It), Eva Clouard (Fr), Fred Boiron (Fr), Phillippe Vaz Coateland (Fr). The work I made turned out to be a land installation for slow walking, pausing from time to time to admire the landscape, from the details of trees up close to the cold and distant mountain peaks. Little houses, representing local dwellings were made by schoolchildren, to hang from the trees along the way.
Photo © Pierre Emmanuel Michel, www.pierremm.com
The link to the full Page Write-up is along the Top Menu.
