Video and Photos of "Scenes from a Village" Expo

Hey,

So here's the video of Deborah's Expo that we promised:

You can find out more about Deborah here.

Deborah, just before people came to see her paintings...

Deborah talking to Kerry and the American playwright Nora Seilheimer

John having fun talking to the locals about the paintings of their dogs an houses...

Filou waiting patiently for some food from the annual village Aperitif

It was a lot of fun...

"Scenes from a Village" - Deborah Clarke - Expo

Above is the poster for Deborah Clarke's "Scenes From a Village" which is showing here today and tomorrow!

Deborah lives in Grenoble and has been to La Muse three time now. You can check out more of her great watercolors here.

Open Studio - Deborah Clarke

Here's the South African artist Deborah Clarke's paintings from her open studio in July: 



The paintings are all watercolors of our village. This was Deborah's second time as a resident here. She lives in Grenoble.

July Bookswap

A new retreat started a few days ago, which means a new slew of books from new residents were donated today.

After we had crepes and homemade dandelion, apricot and fig jams (as well as Kerry's homemade cherry compote!) the writer Sheryl St. Germain donated some of her own books first, talking about the artists who designed the cool covers: Let It Be a Dark Roux (by artist Francis Pavy), The Journals of Scheherazade, and Swamp Songs (by Jacqueline Bishop).

Because she hails from New Orleans Sheryl also brought along Why New Orleans Matters by Tom Piazza, a book "about the world, not just New Orleans," as well as a recent collection of 108 sacred poems, Mala of the Heart, and Sherman Alexi's Face, a writer Sheryl said "writes with a lot of anger and interesting gusto." Sheryl also generously gave the library two books by Paul Guest, One More Theory About Happiness and Notes for My Body Double.

The artist Daphne Leighton talked next, about Israel, a book of photos by Annie Sacerdoti, Meir Shalev's novel The Blue Mountain, and a Sotheby catalogue featuring Israeli art going back to the beginning of the last century.

Daphne also donated two catalogues of her most recent art Images of Thought and unknown familiar land (that's one of her paintings to the left).

Camille Goodison then donated her grandmother's memoir From Harvey River, a book about where she's from, as well as a collection of stories, Creole Folktales, by a writer that inspires her a lot, Patrick Chamoiseau.

Deborah Clarke, an artist from South Africa, who lives in Grenoble and who was here last year too, donated Africa House by Christina Lamb about the Englishman Stewart Gore-Browne because it is "about a house as well as a man" who built it from scratch and helped people in the process even if "the dream turned sour."

On a different note Deborah donated Francis Mayes' Under the Tuscan Sun a book she loves because it emphasizes "a new life in a different country" but also because she "includes recipes" that give you a real feel for the place and the people.

Next up was the Australian Mary Delahunty who is here working on her memoir Public Life, Private Grief. Mary donated Colm Tóibín's Bad Blood because it is "another way of looking at the Troubles" starting in reportage that bleeds into "a beautiful story of a walk along the border." Mary's other book was Chloe Hooper's The Tall Man about her homeland as "an unreconciled country, but also a book about why justice can never be served."

Kathleen Smith, a filmmaker and producer, is also "drawn to the Troubles" as Mary put it, and so gave the library her friend Darren O'Donnell's Social Acupuncture, a book about confronting change, no matter where we are.

Then Kathleen donated "a book about where I grew up, but more because of the universal truths in it," Alice Munro's Dance of The Happy Shades. 

The jewelry designer Toni Freitas came next donating The Vintner's Luck, (she compared it to Marquez's magic realism) a novel by Elizabeth Knox about a guy who meets an angel.

Toni also brought along 1000 Years of Annoying the French, a funny repackaging of history from the same man who wrote A Year in the Merde.

And finally came the writer and designer David Trujillo-Farley's cool children's book This Is Edinburgh by M. Sasek, about the city he and Toni live in.

David's second donation was Ilustrating Children's Books by Martin Salisbury, which "talks about structure, characterization and many other things" that David says are "a lot more useful than many of the pretty books on the subject."

Again, THANK YOU to everyone for the books!

May Book Swap

First off was John Hunter who brought Anne Enright's Booker Prize wining novel The Gathering because it is set in Dublin in the New Ireland of the "economic miracle." John also donated Margaret Atwood's book of essays Negotiating With the Dead: A Writer on Writing. John was here to work on what he said people are now calling "life writing." His biography is about Samuel Smiles.

Next was John's wife Janet who donated I Never Knew That About Ireland by Christopher Winn, a book full of interesting asides on historical characters and places in Ireland. She also brought along Ken Hom's cookbook Ken Hom's Vegetarian Cookery.

Liza Filby who was here on the retreat before this one came next. She reintroduced Kingsley Amis' Lucky Jim and Wynton Marsalis' road trip memoir Jazz in the bittersweet blues of life.

The Irish poet Tadhg Ó Dúshláine donated another of his great books of poetry Mallacht Famaire which he finished last year as well as a copy of some new work tentatively titled "Home and Away" or "Is Abhaile Againn."

Anne Mini, an American author, who has a great blog for writers that you should check out, who was also here last retreat, reintroduced Philip K. Dick's, Valis and F. Scott Fitzgerald's first novel, This Side of Paradise.

Lori Neville, a Canadian writer and artist who lives in California, donated The Virginia Woolf Writers' Workshop: Seven Lessons to Inspire Great Writing. Lori also donated Gary Snyder and Tom Killion's book The High Sierra of California. Killion did the illustrations from woodcuts, in what Lori called "a feast for the eyes" and Snyder wrote the poems and journals. The poet works where Lori works at University of California, Davis.

The South African artist Deborah Clarke, who lives in France, brought a photo memoir of her father JFC Clarke's book A Glimpse Into Marabastad which documents a township in South Africa back in the early 70s.