Vidéo: montagnes et pierres

English Version

versió en català

Une vidéo de la fusion et mélange des roches des murs de la rue de l'Oranger à Arles-sur-Tech avec un sommet d'une montagne à proximité. Lorsqu'on marche en ville, les rues sont si étroites qu'on ne regard pas facilement les montagnes, jusqu'à on arrive à un espace ouvert, comme de la grande, les rues plus récentes sur les bords de la ville. Alors, les montagnes sont partout, mais les pierres sont disparus.

Stones

version français
versió en català

I am trying to make sense of the textures of daily life. The stones that now are only evident on the city walls and a few isolated houses. These were once the stones that were also the exterior of the houses, the stones that, in their infinite irregularity, must have caught the eyes of the medieval residents of Arles-sur-Tech on their daily walks around the town.

Do I notice the stones more because I live in a house of wood in the Northeast of America? When I had a patio built in my back yard, the landscapers wanted to put in blue stone. I resisted - I wanted colorful stone, red, black and blue. I wanted contrast, rhythm, from color - but here it is, in the form.

Now I spend my days in a land of blue stone. A color that would be nothing, without the forms. The shapes. The jagged irregularities that invite the eye to trace the counters of each stone.

Drawings, Photos, and Digital Thinking

version français
versió en català

A few more days to understand the mountains, before linking them to the streets and the buildings.

Arles-sur-Tech is surrounded by mountains that appear too round, too bulbous, too full, for their majestic height. There are sharp edges to be found, protruding rocks in places, but in this time of June, they are predominantly large, curved, almost bulging.

They dwarf the town. The roundness is everywhere, the green of the trees is everywhere.

I want to know the mountains, as friends, and wonder if these mountains have ever been friends of the inhabitants, or if, in their super-round forms, if they have always been a reminder that the earth is bigger than we are. Are they here to remind us that we are small?

Technical information: continued experimentations with the software Painter - which lets my pen glide across the paper more easily than across paper. Nonetheless, I did use some "real" pencil and paper, both combined with photographs.

English: First Drawings

version français
versió en català

For this first week of wandering the territory of Arles-sur-Tech, in the Pyrénées, I am drawing the mountains. A simple step to understand the landscape before I plunge into the esprit, the ethereal bits of culture and history that will somehow become evident to an outsider.

These are the mountains of borders. The mountains that Jews had to cross to be saved from the Nazis, and the mountains that Spanish revolutionaries has to cross in the other direction to be saved from their own terror. The only other route - the sea - is not far - an hour by bus to Perpignan, known as the site of despair, where Walter Benjamin gave up his quest to cross.


For now, the mountains are just the mountains, while I digest the rest.

technical info: drawing in new Painter 12 using Wacom bamboo tablet, combined with digital photographs.. Final combining in Adobe Photoshop, but glad to have Painter as an alternative.





I went to town to buy paper yesterday, and then decided to stay all electronic for now!