"Play Time"

We finally found some time to upload some photos from the art expo we had for two local French artists at the end of June!


Part of the show before people got into the atelier to see it.

The artists, who are married and come from the North of France, live in Miraval Cabardes, about three villages away from Labastide. They are:

Virginie Campagnie (with her little girl):



and, Sebastien Darroman:


Sebastien's the smiling guy in the white pants and black t-shirt - the white and black installation of circles on the easel in the corner, as well as the colorful circular one hanging from the ceiling above the man in the shorts and cap are some of Sebastien's work. They are all made out of hand carved wood and then painted, and people move them about as they pass through the exhibit.

Both Sebastien and Virginnie's work is all centered around the idea/concept of play, hence the title they gave to the expo, "Play Time."

Here's some of Virginnie's smaller sculptures:




Below is one of her acrobatic suspended sculptures. The sculptures are made out of wire and papier mache, then painted.

Below, is Jean-Pierre, in black, from Labastide, the droll waiter from the Sire de Cabaret down the road, who is probably telling those two ladies how much he loves them.

Virginnie's sculpture below was at the entrance of the studio and a lot of people got a great kick out of it.

That's Virginie, below, doing some face painting, with Max our baby-sitter, who's a French horse-whisperer.

Seamus, below, as a tiger!!!




John Clanchy, the Australian writer, pretending to be interested, as John talks about potatoes and the price of cabbage in Venezula.

Andras Maros: novelist and screenwriter

András Maros, an Hungarian writer, and former attendee here, has had his first novel, Lemonade, published.

Born in 1971 in Budapest and Andras has written short stories for Hungarian newspapers, journals and magazines such as Sárkányfű, Élet ÉS Irodalom, Alföld, Mozgó Világ and Jelenkor. His first collection of short stories, Puff, appeared in 2001 and his second Neveket akarok hallani (I would like to hear names) in 2003. Both are published by Palatinus.

Andras also writes screenplays. With Károly Ujj Mészáros he wrote the screenplay for the film rubber man, which was awarded first prize at the Budapest Film Review in 2003.

Art Expo Night

Now that all the Sunday art shows are over we've finally got around to posting some photos from the night. You can also check them out on Facebook too.

The guy with the hat and a smile is Denis Morin.

His wine domaine Chateau La Villatade supplied the red and rose wines for the night.

Below, our neighbor Yves Moffre plays his sax in front of Tom Darnell's landscapes.

Yves is the organizer of the Roquefere Jazz Festival. The Jazz Sous Les Chataigniers is on every August for three days with musicians from all over the world playing. Every year it gets bigger.


















Rey, below, shows Janet Stilson his mother's paintings of our village. Elinore Hollinshead, Rey's mom, stayed at the annex last month.



















Two of the local octogenarians, below, enjoy the party. To the left of them is a painting by Mary Offermann from Santa Cruz. She lives here for five months of the year in the nearby village of Miraval.















Seanin, aka The Troubadore, plays his mandolin, below left. Seanin attended La Muse on a barter last month.



















John and Kerry with Christian Bastian. Christian's paintings are barely visible on the wall directly behind John's head, but you can check him out on his website.

Recent Press

Three articles about La Muse were published last month.

The first profile was on Ginny Wiehardt's great Fiction Writing website for About.com. Ginny came to La Muse as a guest at the wedding of Soft Skull press publisher Richard Nash two years ago; as chance would have it, she had already been accepted on a barter residency at La Muse when she found out that this was also to be the location of her good friends' wedding. Ginny is currently revising a novel. Her book of poetry, Compulsion of the Unlocked Thing, was a finalist for the Ohio State University/The Journal Book Award in Poetry in 2005.

The second article was in the El Dorado Sun's Sun Monthly, entitled "The Power of Writing to Heal," by former La Muse attendee, Shanti Bannwart from Santa Fe, New Mexico. Shanti attended La Muse in April 2006. Her most recent article, Eating Her Children, appeared in the June issue of monthly The Tokyo Advocate published by Printed Matter Press.

The third was an interview with Kerry and John in The Connexion, the largest expatriate newspaper in France, discussing how they made La Muse possible.

Robin Hemley - Guggenheim Fellow!

Well done and congratulations to our friend, and previous attendee, Robin Hemley, who has just been awarded a 2008 Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship!

Robin has published seven books of nonfiction and fiction. His latest book will about revisiting his youth. His nonfiction includes: Invented Eden, The Elusive, Disputed History of the Tasaday (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2003), the anthology Extreme Fiction:Fabulists and formalists with Michael Martone (Longman, 2004), the memoir, Nola: A Memoir Of Faith, Art And Madness (Graywolf, 1998) and Turning Life Into Fiction (Graywolf Press). He has also written a novel, The Last Studebaker, (Graywolf) and the story collections, The Big Ear (Blair) and All You Can Eat (Atlantic Monthly Press).
You can get all of his books on Amazon.

Robin is also the Director of the Nonfiction Writing Program at the University of Iowa.

Tim Keane - Alphabets of Elsewhere

Tim Keane, who attended La Muse last year, has just had a book of poetry published.

Please check him out at his website, or buy his collection on Amazon, in St. Mark's bookstore or directly from Cinnamon Press.

Thanks!

Here's what a few people had to say about his poetry:

'Tim Keane's poems move with impetuous energy, fired by a centrifugal and neo-Romantic enthusiasm. His appetite for texture, color, sound, culture, and sensation is inspiring.'
-Wayne Koestenbaum, Hotel Theory & Jackie Under My Skin

`With a subtle, economic music that retains the strength of fiction, Tim Keane surveys the world -- through desire's fancy and memories of the real -- with the accuracy of a cartographer.'
-Ammiel Alcalay, Memories of Our Future & Sarajevo Blues

`Tim Keane paints daybreaks, loves, losses, and longing. His is a passionate voice that does not compromise its craft, a voice free of ‘chic ironies,’ engaged with its times, politics, places beyond its borders, a voice that assures us American poetry is in good hands.
-Naveed Alam, A Queen of No Ordinary Realms

Getting Ready for the Show

Dominique hangs Helene's chestnut wood hanging "systeme"...

Helene tries to choose...

Christophe framed...

Kerry wonders...

Petit a petit l'oiseau fait son nit.

We all meet again tomorrow.

On verra...

Expo d'art

Vernissage le Samedi, 22 mars, 16H-20H

18H: apéros, musique

“Paysages du Coin”

Christian Bastian – Villar en Val

Thomas Darnell – St. Valiere et Texas, USA

Christophe Eppe – St. Julien

Hélène Geyre - Castans

Elinore Hollishead – Rhode Island, USA

Dominique Martin - Roquefere

Mary Offerman – Miraval et California, USA

mandoline par Seanin (aka Trubadore) – Berlin via Angleterre

Lieu: A l'atelier de La Muse, 1 rue de la Place, 11380 Labastide Esparbairenque.

L’expo se poursuivra les dimanches après midi, le 30 Mars, 6 Avril et 13 Avril 2008 (de 15 à 18 heures)

par “l'Association La Muse pour la Culture et la Création en Cabardès et Montagne Noire”

tableau par Dominique Martin

Cowboy the Painter

On his daily trip to the bread truck M. Garcia, "aka Cowboy", decided to show one of our artists how it's really done. Note how he has suggested a very striking Greek blue sky as a background, quote, "This piece needs more Gauguin and less vegetation to fill the canvas out. The juxtaposition of ..."

And then the bread truck horn blared and he ran.

The New Year

January came to a close, and we said our sad goodbyes to what was a great, productive month. The weather was in the 50s and 60s most of the month, and we had a rare number of complete double rainbows right here in our valley. We're feeling pretty lucky to live here.

Tom Montgomery-Fate (US; creative non-fiction) will be missed for his parenting empathy, his very focussed and calm presence, and his great sense of humor. Robert Chiovolini (US; fiction; chef by day) was like a Tasmanian devil in the kitchen all month (as he was last March, during his first stay with us). He cooked like crazy and could write reams about why he chooses the kind of flour he chooses (details we've decided he should release into his fiction or at the least a blog). A lovely, soulful person, we hope to see him a third year in a row, in 2009. Thanks for the lovely meals, Rob! Alice Nelson (Australia; fiction) returns home ready for the release of her first novel in March, tentatively titled In Arcadia. She, too, plans to return... we hope so! Congratulations to all (including Barbara, below) for a month of hard work and play.

Barbara Clark (UK; poetry) is staying on for her third month, this time as a barter. She has been joined in February by Christina Koechl (Swiss by way of US and Canada; fiction). La Muse hails the return of our most-returned barter, Seanin Cloney, aka Trubadore, (UK by way of Berlin and Paris; mandolin player, singer, songwriter).

Now, time to get back to work!

Importing Traditions?

Well, I'm just now recovered from Thanksgiving. It was the first time I'd ever cooked a turkey (let alone all those appetizers and side dishes).

We had 19 people over, mostly French. I was thankful for friendship, love, food, and for having been welcomed to France. And I was thankful for our American friend Nicole Darnell, who thought it was at lunchtime and showed up with a whole afternoon to help me prepare ahead of time. If she'd not been there, not only would we have had no mashed potatoes, a hairy turkey, and no walnut pie (no pecans locally), but my kids would have been tugging at my cuffs all day. Nicole's kids Joseph and Ava know how to keep our boys busy and happy. We missed their Dad Tom, who was home getting ready for an art show.

Our turkey was the smallest bird for twenty people I've ever seen, and it was literally exactly enough (phew!). I think turkeys here, having not been bred and hybrided to death for generations to feed twenty people at once, are naturally smaller... the key word being "naturally". Our little bird was tasty, tender, and unfortunately still covered in black feathers before I cooked it. John spent an hour with a lighter and some tweezers, pulling those damn things out one by one (thanks John!) while I sweated over the timing of it all.

Importing holidays and traditions is a funny thing, especially to a country that really likes to know how to do things exactly right and really well. The French are easily thrown off by things like, say, Halloween or potluck dinners.

First example, Halloween. There I was with a grandma and five little kids dressed in simple costumes, just a hat or a tail here and there and they were transformed. We had a knight, a Mickey Mouse whose costume consisted entirely of black construction paper (Fionn), a "Spiderman" (I didn't have the heart to tell Seamus that he was actually dressed as Superman, not Spiderman, but no one here really knows the difference so it didn't matter), a Bob the Builder, and a fairy.

We traipsed through the village, shouting "Halloween!" at every door ("Trick or Treat" was too hard of a first English lesson for the French kids). A very surprised man or woman would answer the door and either look helplessly at me and say, "What do I do?", or they'd reach into the open bag of candy held out by the first kid in line and take a candy out saying, "Oh, a candy, thank you!" (The kids were great, they'd just say, "What'd you get?") About five people did know it was Halloween and did actually have candy in the house, so the kids had full, sugared-up bellies by the time we got home. (One refreshing thing about Halloween in a village of fifty or so inhabitants, all of whom you know by name: The kids could eat the candy as we went, rather than have to wait for the razor-blade inspection that always followed trick-or-treating when I was little in the states.)

As for Thanksgiving potlucks, a neighbor mentioned that they were once invited to a potluck, and was amazed that someone would actually invite people over for dinner and ask them cook something for the meal. As he put it, "It seemed strange to us, I mean, the hostess was a very wealthy woman."

John Clanchy: Writer

John Clanchy has written seven volumes of fiction (novels, novellas and short stories). His work has won awards in Europe, the US, New Zealand, and Australia. His novel The Hard Word (2002) was awarded the ACT Book of the Year and Vincenzo's Garden (2005), a collection of prize-winning short stories, have been published to wide critical acclaim. John's forthcoming collection of short stories was mainly written at La Muse. Born in Melbourne John has lived in Canberra since 1975.

What is, for you, the height of misery?
Visits from the Black Dog.

Where would you like to live?
Australia and France.

Your ideal of earthly happiness?
i. equality for all as a universal aspiration
ii. (personally) a dinner table, surrounded by family, with fine food, wine, laughter, story-telling and conversation.

For which fault do you have the greatest amount of indulgence?
Indulgence.

Who are the novelistic heroes whom you prefer?
Those involved in making complex moral decisions where the available options all look bad.

Who is your favorite historical character?
Alexander the Great, Buddha.

Your favorite heroines in real life?
Aung San Su Kyi, Brigid Ballard.

Your favorite painter?
Van Gogh.

Your favorite musician?
Bob Dylan, Roy Bailey, Pavarotti.

The virtue you most prefer in men?
Empathy, humour.

The virtue you most prefer in women?
Empathy, humour, womanliness.

The virtue you prefer?
Compassion.

Your preferred occupation?
Punning.

Whom would you have liked to be?
Anton Chekhov, without the TB.

The principal trait of my character?
The persistent desire to be a better person in the face of manifestly inadequate resources to achieve it.

What I appreciate the most in my friends?
"Tenderness - provided they possess a physical charm which makes their tenderness worth having" (Marcel Proust)

My principle fault?
Pedantry (for example knowing the difference between 'principle faults' and 'principal' ones. Excessive criticality.

What is your favorite occupation?
Punning.

What might my greatest misfortune be?
To lose a child.

The color I prefer?
Blues, royal and cobalt.

The flower I like?
Iris.

The bird I prefer?
Kookaburra.

My favorite prose authors?
Chekhov, Tolstoy, Patrick White, Marquez.

My preferred poets?
Shakespeare, Marvell, Keats, Tennyson.

My favorite hero of fiction?
Voss.

My favorite heroines of fiction?
Anna Karenina, Madame Bovary.

My favorite composers?
Bach, Beethoven, Verdi.

My favorite painters?
Van Gogh, Vermeer, Sisley, Hopper.

My heroes in real life?
Mandela, Rabin.

My favorite historical heroines?
Mary Magdalene, Elizabeth 1.

My favorite names?
Brigid, Anna, David, Ben, Edward, Tessa, Sebastian.

What is it you most dislike?
The 3Ps: pomposity, pretentiousness, and preening self-regard.

Historical figures whom I scorn the most?
The occupants of the Vatican, George Bush.

The military feat that I admire the most?
Gallipoli, the Western Front, the Pacific war - all the great disasters.

The reform that I admire the most?
Emancipation (from slavery, childhood labour).

The gift of nature I would like to possess?
A good singing voice.

How I would like to die?
Reconciled and in my sleep.

The present state of my mind?
Gradual acceptance (of age, limits of possibility).

What is your slogan?
Le temps se passe, la peine s'oublie, l'oeuvre reste.