chezgrace

Screening of the play "LIMBO" chez Grace

2015-10-28T12:36:00.003+01:00

Bits of a play on film chez Grace on Tuesday 3/11

Filmed extracts from the play "Limbo" directed by Manish Gandhi - poetic, eye-opening, and devastating, this work was produced in India to much acclaim. I'm really proud to be able to bring a taste of it to Paris!

A little bit about the play:

"The play is set in the early 90s in a hostel in Delhi, at one of the most prominent schools in the capital. It is
the pre-internet age, and it is a world of assembly-line education and ruthless cheer-leading, in which rosetinted
notions of India are slowly crumbling. The story follows five youngsters who negotiate the labyrinthine
universe they are thrown into to discover some measure of who their true selves are.."

More from Manish:
What is the secret of the play?
Even though life involves the shedding of many skins, the memory of being ‘struck while still hot’ is the most precious, and holds the secret to what we become. The secret of the play is the interplay of emotions felt for the first time—love, hate, anger, catharsis, death, cynicism. Everything is a first-time emotion. The embracing of your own wants and desires, the sense of your own desirability, the beauty of life, is what the play is about.

Who made this play?
Manish Gandhi is a theatre actor/ creator who graduated from LAMDA, London Academy of Music & Dramatic Art. Manish specialises in cross cultural drama and has produced, directed and acted in many critically acclaimed theatre productions internationally. He can be contacted at coalseme@gmail.com

Dark Shadows

2013-05-08T08:40:00.001+02:00

Profound depth

The artist would receive me Wednesday afternoons in his ground floor chambre de bonne, a little studio about twelve square meters, not far away on the rue des Trois Frères. He liked Bach and he would have music playing from his i-Pod. He would just show me his work, old and new, tell me about his life, his studies, his family. A serious man, he rarely smiled.

I would leave his studio always feeling uplifted, and like I'd come to certain realizations about art and the process, but not sure that I could hold on to them. So I would go back for more.

Xavier Auffret's show "Verticale" opens in a week and he and his wife-counsellor, have chosen works on paper that all have that same vertical format and an austere thoughtfulness that takes time to appreciate. Since the work takes time and space, please contact me for a private view. I am not inviting a lot of people to the vernissage because I do not want a crush.

There will be a Meetup, on the other hand, which is more the merrier, with a cocktail and meeting the artist.

http://www.meetup.com/chez-Grace/events/114792222/?a=ra1_vl&_af_eid=114792222&_af=event

Wild

2013-03-14T22:06:00.000+01:00

Seemingly Innocent Dots

Looking at the collection of Nassim al Amin's newest paintings just now hung in my living room gallery, I imagine how people will react to them Saturday at the opening.

Nassim, part Egyptian, part Syrian, used to live in Eritrea but now lives in the building next to mine and has been here before, even painting a mural on my walls that was delightful, surprising, and funny. I was bowled over when I saw his new work a couple weeks ago and made space for him to exhibit it here on the spur-of-the-moment.

The canvasses all burst with color and all are comprised of tiny dots of paint that Nassim applies with a Q-tip. The undulating lines of color dots make for a trippy experience and certainly the paintings that are like mandalas are very meditative indeed.

There are also his usual cast of comic-looking characters, usually blonde, with a dark history of corruption, greed, and all the perks that capitalism brings: a gradual, killing restriction of freedom. A blonde girl jauntily leads two dogs on a leash. "Oh, a girl walking her dogs," I comment. "Grace," he said, "In Africa, the dogs have nothing to eat. No one has anything to eat. But they run around, they play with the children. Here, dogs have plenty to eat. But the only time they go outdoors is to make pipi and caca. They have no freedom."

And that theme runs through his paintings here and is the name we gave to his show. The pen might be mightier than the sword,but watch out for an artist who wields a wild Q-tip.

Shown: detail of painting from the "Freedom series" by Nassim al Amin.

Photo: Nick Kent.

Energy and honesty II

2013-02-26T09:16:00.002+01:00

Positive Identification

Scissors, a hammer, a level, a razor (or "cutter" in French), a packet of tobacco bought in Portugal, an orchid that was a gift from my friend the Chinese radio journalist, carrot cake and a pot of tea: the still life from this past Saturday when the paintings from the new show went up.

Julien Isoré did his work quietly while in the kitchen I looked at email and Facebook.

His show called "NEW PAINTING" debuts this weekend. But it will only be here this weekend, and "exceptionnellement," as say the French, it will be in the afternoons, rather than at night. Tea will be served.

Please contact me at grace.teshima@gmail.com if you would like more information.

Six paintings in oil by Julien Isoré that have to be seen in person because photographs don't do them justice.

Orchid: Phalaenopsis from Okidland, www.okidland.com
Scissors: Fiskars
Tea: "Detox" by Kusmi
Teapot: Royal Copenhagen
Plastic plate and serving tray: Rice of Denmark
Carrot cake: from "Good Old-fashioned Cakes" by Susan Kosoff, St. Martin's Press New York, 1989

Energy and honesty - I

2013-02-25T18:43:00.000+01:00

New Painting

My salon smells like paint. Today is Monday. The paintings were hung on Saturday. That means that for two days now we've been getting to know each other, the paintings and me. But the actual smell of oil paint- it's heavy and sweet at the same time - is one dimension of painting that I've never encountered before.

It's because the paintings are new. There are six paintings that make up the new painting of Julien Isoré, and which he hung on Saturday. Before he got down to work hanging the paintings, we talked a very long time about his painting and how he had sequestered himself in Lisbon after several years of the love project that brought him on tour to many countries outside of France. And as much as the Love all around the world project flourished and grew, and gained disciples, and unified people, it did not give him any time to paint.

The pendulum swings. He took shelter in Lisbon, a very different life from Paris, where, he says, "People get together and go for walks there. And talk. Sometimes they bring a piece of fruit..." So this simple life enabled him to get back to painting and this show is the fruit(!) of four years work. He wanted to call it "Faces," because three of the paintings are portraits of friends. But I demurred, because of the film by Cassavetes, and because I so much love his beach scenes.

Because he is so much more eloquent than I, we are organizing an evening this Thursday, the last day of February, so that he can speak about his work and life. For me, it is summed up in the two words that are the hallmark of great art: energy and honesty.

For more information on the evening with Julien this Thursday, please email me at grace.teshima@gmail.com

This weekend we plan an afternoon viewing at tea time.

His website is http://www.julienisore.com/paintings.html

Pictured above: "Femme"160 x 146 cm. oil on canvas 2010. Price on request.

Grey Matter and Juxtapositions

2012-11-20T15:42:00.000+01:00

Photographer Photographed

The photography exhibit was planned about a year ago when Sophie Molins mentioned to her friend Paul Stewart that she would like to have her photos on view in Paris during the fabled Mois de la Photo, that is, November. And thus the art agent called me and made a date to show me some of her work.

Sophie came from London last week with her little gems and what transpired on my walls is a collection of the mundane and the quirky, and juxtapositions of the romantic and provocative.

The night after opening night, Sophie explained that when she lived in Spain, she realized that she missed grey skies. And so one wall is of photos all in grey tones. "Birds on a Wire" pale grey with a line of silouetted birds recalls a solitary line of music.

The show which will be on view here until January 2013, is called "It Really Doesn't Matter," and takes its name from a photo of a lintel over which is written in script "It really does not matter."

Please email me for an appointment.

Photo: Olivier Poivre who remarks 'All she wears is her Leica.'

Classical Music Up Close in Paris

2012-11-20T14:55:00.001+01:00

A spiritual impulse

I don't go to concerts for months, and then wind up going to three in the span of two weeks, to wit:

Jay Gottlieb at Mona Bismarck American Center for Art and Culture, in teaching mode, extemporizing on American music in a two-part series that was as much a revelation to me as it was pure joy to experience once again his exuberance and mastery of piano.

Sarah Niblack and four other young musicians of Classical Revolution at Café Chéri in Belleville this past Sunday ended with what they called a "jam," where a classically trained oboeist and bassoonist jumped in and played various tangoes and "Three Little Maids" from the Mikado!

What's exciting is turning off the cellphone, closing my eyes and concentrating on the sounds, on the notes, and when it's good, feeling those shivers up my spine. I watched the musicians from SinfoniettaPARIS a month ago perform in my house for an afternoon concert that came as close to perfection as anything I have experienced in a long, long time.

SinfoniettaPARIS Chamber Orchestra, under the practiced baton of conductor Michael D. Boone, will continue its "Cocktails and Conversations" in two weeks, on December 6th, which is a Thursday. (The venue has yet to be announced.) This time Quatuor Franz will perform. The young musicians are so skilled, so passionate and have such a rapport with each other, that the opportunity to see them up close is a rare and special indeed.

Jay Gottlieb quoted American composer George Crumb: "Music is a system of proportions in the service of a spiritual impulse."

Pictured: SinfoniettaPARIS chez Grace last month. To book for the next SPCO concert and cocktail event December 6, 2012 please write Fanny at mecenat@sinfoniettaparis.org
€25 (and possibility to join the patrons circle starting at €50.)

More information:

SinfoniettaPARIS Chamber Orchestra: www.sinfoniettaparis.org
www.facebook.com/sinfoniettaparis

Quatuor Franz: www.quatuorfranz.fr/

Mona Bismarck Center for American Art and Culture: http://monabismarck.org/

Classical Revolution (Paris): http://www.facebook.com/classicalrevolutionparis

Dream Catcher

2012-07-24T20:43:00.000+02:00

Marcus McAllister opens his sketchbook

As I write this, all my windows are open because summer has finally come to visit Paris. From the kitchen window next to mine I hear the impassioned pleas of a young neighbor I do not know trying to persuade his friend about something. He repeats his name, "Raphael," over and over. As I am trying to concentrate on describing the art that was just hung on my walls today, I am distracted by conflict next door. I am trying to get into the zone, and it seems the universe is doing its best to prevent me.

So to get away from the noise, I will leave my table and walk to the salon where Marcus McAllister just put up his work today. Framed drawings, and actual pages taken from his sketchbook which he calls "Estomac Onirique," or "Dream Belly." It is like a visual diary that is attached to him at all times. He draws constantly and uses the pages as fodder when he gets back to the studio.

He brought his notebooks to a gathering here two years ago. It was the ninth anniversary of the World Trade Center. He had ten or so of his notebooks and shared the pages he'd painted right before the event, one with unconscious foresight of a burning tower.
Here now are images filled with nature: a crow, a sparrow, a rat and a frog; trees in an evening in a tropical city; and faces: a young man, a sorrowful woman. Conflict? I don't see it. What I do see is a harvest of an artist's unconscious and the fruit of the hard work of a talented, gentle man.

Image above: XIII Mais à chacun selon ses besoins. ("But each according to their needs.") 47 x 65 cm. Acrylic/charcoal/crayon on paper. 2012. This and others on view here until August 5th.

Stealing Beauty - I

2011-10-26T13:48:00.001+02:00

Sois belle et tais-toi

When I was looking for a videographer in 2006 to record the art openings I was having, Susie Hollands of Ivy Paris (now Vingt Paris) suggested Elena Rossini, an Italian in Paris who was filmmaker, director, and editor. Elena wound up doing several great videos of the vernissages here, and includes one on her website:

http://elenarossini.com/?p=473

I would go to her apartment and sit in on the editing process and was always impressed by her exquisite taste and intelligence, and thrilled with the finished product.

But all good things come to an end (and an end of one thing is the beginning of another) so that Elena became more and more involved in her own projects and less available for extracurricular ones like mine. A few years ago she started speaking of a film she was putting together about the beauty industry.

Around that time I attended a debate about the French presidential candidates at the time, Ségolène Royal and Nicolas Sarkozy. Why did it rankle that the speaker identified Ségolène, among other things, as "belle," but neglected to mention that Nicolas was "laid"? He mentioned that she was beautiful, like that was important in a candidate if the candidate were female but if the candidate were male, it didn't much matter if he were ugly.

Business as usual.

And so Elena takes on the beauty business in her film "The Illusionists."

It's important for a woman to be beautiful, culture says, and so often that means not as she is in nature. If she's white, she needs to tan, if she's black, she needs skin lightening products, if she's big-busted, she needs breast reduction, if she's small-breasted, she needs augmentation. Same with the nose. Same with the hair. And let us not even mention the whole concept of five-inch heels!

When my youngest daughter was in French kindergarten, maternelle, she came home from school one day indignant because a sly female classmate had lanced the ultimate French insult: "Tu n'est pas belle." My daughter, blonde and blue-eyed, a classic beauty who already knew at age four years old the importance and the duty to be beautiful, the jealousy she would inspire, and disdain, and longing, a little micro example of what Elena courageously and astonishingly attacks in her film.

http://theillusionists.org/

To be continued....

Notes:

"Stealing Beauty" (1996) is the name of a film directed by Bernardo Bertolucci starring Liv Tyler and Jeremy Irons.

"Sois belle et tais-toi" or "Be beautiful and shut up" is a French expression and admonition to members of the gentle sex. I first heard this expression from my French father-in-law who tried to instruct me in culture and cultural differences.

It is also the name of a song by Serge Gainsbourg, a films by both Marc Allégret (1958) and Delphine Seyrig (1981).

Keith Campagna: "Non-fiction"

2011-04-22T16:00:00.000+02:00

The storyline is the material and the emotion

Does every picture tell a story?

For Connecticut artist Keith Campagna, "what you see is what you get." That is the reason he titled the show that opens chez Grace tomorrow "Non-fiction." In twenty-one unframed paintings on paper he evokes leaves, flowers, the sky at night, the heart of a storm.

One wall is given over to a series that is a tribute to Japan after the recent disasters there. A collector of his work who lives in Basel calls his new work shown here "transformational," because he has gone from working on a huge scale to these smaller and more meditative works. He has brought the outside in, and gone inside, "pulling in, taking the essence, really compressing into a small space so many layers of nature."

Indeed, in the show here in June 2008 entitled "Passion and Elegance," Keith's big paintings wowed the viewers with their scale and intense color. Irving Solero's finely detailed photographs of couture masterpieces from the collection of Fashion Institute of Tecbnology in New York lent counterpoint elegance.

"Non-fiction," then, is the real, unadulterated story, the unvarnished truth, the un-sugar-coated facts that will not be glossed over but rather confronted, lived through, dealt with, mourned if necessary, and transformed. This joyful reunion of friends and family for his show at this spring time of year in the sunniest April in Paris in a decade celebrates new life, new love and new understanding of our reality.

Pictured: "Lullabye for a Rainy Night," 2011, acrylic on acid-free watercolor paper, 22" x 30." Price on request.

A Scholar Discusses Printmaking and Matisse

2011-02-04T10:36:00.000+01:00

Multi-lingual

Members of two venerable Parisian institutions got together two nights ago to hear an art historian discuss the current exhibit at the Mona Bismarck Foundation in the 16th arrondissement. Both have their offices there, and so, theoretically at least, have first dibs on what goes on in the gallery space.

The American Wives of Europeans (AAWE) and the Association of Americans Resident Overseas (AARO) were fortunate enough to get deeper insight into the current exhibit "Another Language - Matisse as Printmaker" when Madeleine Fidell-Beaufort explained different printmaking techniques and provided a glossary of French-to-English printmaking terms, fleshed out how Matisse came to making prints along with painting ("By this time he was well-established, wealthy and famous, and so was doing it only to please himself..."), gave us some suggestions for further study, and highly recommended the exhibition's catalog.

Dr. Beaufort has lived in Paris since 1971 and is a long-time member of AAWE. Besides being an art historian who has written articles about art collecting in the U.S., American artists in Paris, and her doctoral dissertation on the French landscape painter Charles François Daubigny, she has made prints herself and so could easily describe the various processes and the effect and results of acid on copper, for example.

The Museum of Modern Art in New York's interactive explanation and description is a good way to understand it all, and fun:

http://www.moma.org/interactives/projects/2001/whatisaprint/print.html

And our speaker also recommended another resource in the Print Council of America:

Print Council of America: www.printcouncil.org/

Shown above, from the exhibit:

Nu dans les ondes (Nude in the Sea), 1938
Linocut 22.1 x 35 cm,
On wove paper with G. Maillol.

"Another Language - Matisse as Printmaker"
until February 15th.

Mona Bismarck Foundation
34, avenue de New York
PARIS 16

More about the show:

http://www.monabismarck.org/current.html

A Look at the Week Ahead

2011-01-30T14:23:00.000+01:00

Segue into February

Monday: Feldenkreis class with Virginie Avot here in my own living room with three or four other women who appreciate body work that is gentle, subtle and deep. Virginie is a gifted teacher who is also a dancer.

Tuesday: Photo shoot with Chantal Casanova in her studio on the place Emile Goudeau. She is a magician. No more need be said.

Wednesday: The beginning of the Salon des Entrepreneurs at the Palais de Congrès. I've signed up for "Business Angels: mode d'emploi" and also "Quelles sont les stratégies à mettre en place pour conquérir de nouvelles parts de marchés ?"
And in the evening, at the fabulous Mona Bismarck Foundation on the avenue de New York, a talk on printmaking by a renowned art educator and historian Madeleine Beaufort under the auspices of AARO and AAWE.

Thursday: teach English in the morning. Lunch in the 7th with a FB friend. Dinner with Aline Geller of the BOX in Paris, and culture maven and bonne vivante Jill Danger. I think we're supposed to go to someplace cool.

Friday: This is my day to catch up. The butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker. Get ready for the weekend. Clean the house. Pay the bills. Like that. My daughter is going to NYC tomorrow for a week so I just might be needed on the mom front.
Today is also the beginning of Exat Expo at Parc Floral in the Bois de Vincennes. Should be good.

Coming soon: a report on Barbara Gaile's show here (until April).

Our New Year 2011

2011-01-01T17:33:00.000+01:00

The way we live now

I don't go out on New Year's eve. It's because I go out quite a bit year 'round and also because I've a contrarian nature and do the opposite of what everybody else is doing, so last night I stayed home and read for two and a half hours til midnight-thirty and then turned off the light. I'm reading "Life" by Keith Richards.

The scent of pine from the four (!) Christmas trees we have is still oddly touching, but they are drying out and I don't think that I'll be able to wait til January 6th to get rid of them. I am very moved by all the new year's greetings I've received from all over the world. And I wish the same to all who read this: peace, prosperity, joy, and the continued ability to be touched by love and art in 2011.

On the street where I live

2010-11-30T11:10:00.001+01:00

Full of joy

Sometimes I pretend I'm a hermit and don't go out of my apartment for days, or at least out of my neighborhood. The rue des Abbesses has plenty going on, sometimes a little too much (a parade on the weekends, a spontaneous flea market near the metro, itinerant capoeira dancer-acrobats in warm weather, and now a Christmas market at the place of metro Abbesses.)

On the two block walk to the post office, besides passing the butcher, the baker and the candlestick- maker (more or less), I also notice quite a few clothing and cosmetic boutiques that have popped up in the last eight years (and actually are replacing the butcher, the baker and the candlestick-maker!)

Here is a sign in the window of a boutique that caused me to stop and take in the sentiment: "A marvelous world and full of joy." Made my day.

Back story: the boutique is Kiehl's, of Manhattan, recently installed on my street, and the poster refers to the Jeff Koons family foundation that is donating proceeds of a certain product to a charity to fight against the exploitation of children. (I've always had a soft spot in my heart for Jeff Koons, no matter what people say.)

He says "It's for the artist to re-organize things, to mix things together like a new chemical composition."

May this always be so.

More about the campaign:

http://helenedenamps.wordpress.com/2010/11/24/kiehl%E2%80%99s-et-jeff-koons-pour-une-noble-cause/

Sweet

2010-10-31T16:56:00.012+01:00

My Favorite Blogger

Carol Gillott was in Paris again, attending the Salon du Chocolat, discovering new bakeries, and photographing whatever struck her fancy. It's usually something colorful or sweet, but usually both.

ParisBreakfasts is the name of her blog which is an ongoing love letter to Paris and its delights: the pastry, Parisians' inimitable style, the serendipity and surprises of an American still starry-eyed about this city after all these years. Her wide-eyed wonder and whimsical take on things never fails to delight me. She is positively zany, humble about the French she occasionally fractures, and is one of the few bloggers who answers you back personally, immediately when you leave a comment! (I hope I am not spoiling a good thing. Carol has five thousand devoted fans, and counting!)

I was able to lure her to Montmartre this time. We met at the bus stop near the Moulin Rouge, and I suppressed a giggle because she speaks the way she writes: stream-of-consciousness, parenthetically, self-deprecatingly. She's so funny. She handed me a jar of a special super-duper chocolate spread that she'd nabbed at the Salon. (Thanks, Carol!) She took pics of a candy stand near metro Blanche, fruit from a primeur, fruit tarts at Les Petits Mitrons, cupcakes at Berko, and the crowd in the Amélie Poulain café, Café de Deux Moulins. Her mascot Bear sat on the table quietly watching her eat her salad. I was not surprised at her bracelet: a chunky ceramic affair with cookies and candies, and her t-shirt was a hommage to multi-colored macaroons.

We climbed the three flights up to my apartment which looks pretty snazzy when the sun is shining in and I beamed too because we both agreed: Carol's Paris watercolors would look great in a show here! (to be continued!)
http://parisbreakfasts.blogspot.com/2010/10/salon-du-chocolat-2010.html

Pictured: my laptop's keyboard, including the letters "C" and "G" for Carol's initials. I had wanted to include the drawings on the postcard-invitations she gave me for her show at Alliance Française in Philadelphia on November 5th (see blog for details) but my photos of them just do not do them justice!

I heart To Be Happy

2010-09-22T19:03:00.002+02:00

Getting Back on Track

Duane Gautier of Honfleur Gallery in Washington DC is in town for a few days and as is his wont, told me to make reservations at whatever restaurant I wanted. Le Chateaubriand was booked up, so we went back to Drouant in the 2nd.

Always a lot to talk about, because he is running Honfleur plus another gallery, called Vivid Solutions, which is a photo gallery and lab, plus renovating inexpensive artist housing, plus the job training program ARCH, all east of the river in Anacostia.

For me the summer meant taking a little break from having shows, except for the architecture students from Lawrence Tech showing their senior projects here comparing 'terrain vague,' or vacant lots both in Detroit where they are from, and Clichy-sous-Bois. When Professor James Stevens explained their projects to me I knew I couldn't say no.

That was mid-August. More recently, because it was the ninth anniversary of the events of September 11, 2001, I decided to get a roomful of people together to see just how we have all digested the trauma and how much more healing we have to do. The amazing collection of 911 memorabilia of Al Herter and his recollections were at once moving and uncomfortable.

The artists Nassim al-Amin, Vincent Alran, Tom J. Byrne, Dimitri Fagbohoun, Alexis Peskine, and Antony Peskine contributed work and shared about their own experience of that fateful day. Marcus McAllister, who is in Nimes for the salon Art'Nîm brought four of his artist notebooks including the one preceding September 11th called, in eery inadvertent prediction,"Le Tour Blessé par l'Eclair." (The Tower Struck by Lightning).

The paintings and installation will be here for another week (by appointment.)

No more shows scheduled til the spring when Keith Campagna will return with his new work. Til then I plan some travel and when not travelling, hibernation on the rue des Abbesses.

http://www.honfleurgallery.com/about.html
http://www.ltu.edu/architecture_and_design/

Photo: A shop window on the rue du Quatre-Septembre that I passed on my way to the 95 bus late last night. I Love To Be Happy. Pretty much the way I was feeling.

(Many thanks to Jill D. for her comment, which made a quick edit necessary!)

Can Erotic Be Untitled?

2010-06-10T10:26:00.003+02:00

It's a mystery

A title adds context to a work. It gives a clue to the work's content. Or it can lead you in a completely different direction.

When you see that a work is "Untitled," that means you are on your own.

And so each of Richard Keo's photographs in the show here called "Ex Eau Set," which closes Saturday, is untitled and so each must be taken in, and regarded, and contemplated and appreciated divorced from any help that the maker might offer.

In the petit salon, a series of a little toy boat slowly sinking. The boat's base is red, the sail is white, the water a bright turquoise blue. The progression into the void is what first attracted me to his work. And made me dream.

The most numerous images are in a series that document a little girl playing on the beach. She is between child and teenager and her cavorting in the waves and posing on a chair or with a surfboard illustrates a freedom and liberty that this young age embodies. It is all innocence and movement.

But after two weeks of living with these images, it is the erotic series, that we hung in my bedroom, that I realize are the "pièces de résistance." (I just may take them out of the bedroom and put them in a more prominent position.) A beautiful blonde, with her arms above her head, tied with cord so her left breast is supported by the rope. A black and white image of a dark-haired beauty on an overstuffed chair: her limbs are at angles, and her stocking top graphically delineates her thigh.

The very beautiful model for this photo, with the very beautiful name of Océanne, assisted Richard in hanging the show and attended the vernissage, wearing the eroticism lightly, accepting attention to her beauty in a dreamy way, not saying too much, except with her eyes, guarding the mystery, and in a certain sense, adding her own style of "Untitled" to her image.

"Ex Eau Set" limited edition numeric prints by Richard Keo, prices on request.

Closing party cocktail this Saturday, June 12th. Please email for details: grace.teshima@gmail.com

Souvenirs of Alsace

2010-05-02T20:44:00.000+02:00

It's personal

What happens when two ideas of vacation collide?

I like the beach and lolling in the sun. Since we were going to Munster, I thought it might be fun to sit some place and watch the frenetic activity of...cows. But my companion and guide had other ideas. He planned a route through Alsace with activities and the requisite picture-taking. I don't own a camera. I hate souvenirs. Once it's over, it's over. (But I do buy postcards, and sometimes even write them and send them. But that's another story.) We had only one rule: no choucroute. He hates it and since I am lukewarm, I thought it would be funny to go to Alsace and eat around the specialty of that region.

Looking back over the six days spent in Alsace, the département called the Bas Rhin, some visual memories stand out: crossing the Rhine River for the first time. The fields of bright yellow colza in great swaths of color next to squares of green. The steep sides of the hills planted in the grapes that make Riesling and Gerwertstraminer. The 'colombages' timbered little dwellings so quaint, old, and not French but German-looking.

Also a different sort of breakfast: ham, cheese and a very heavy dark bread. The last morning in Riquewihr, Jacky Merius, the proprietor of the hotel, Le Dolder, and the fourth generation of his family to run it, came to chat with us, cheerfully remarking on our good luck with the weather and in answer to our question, explaining that it was still too early for the geraniums that spill from the window boxes giving certain towns the appellation 'ville fleuri,' or 'flowering city.' But those months of flowers also mark a quadrupling in the number of tourists.

I thought of the hours on the road ahead of us. Those fields, the monotony, the radio. His left hand on the wheel, his right hand on my thigh. I looked at the remains of breakfast, and the heavy brass key to our room. A tiny spot of honey had dripped onto the paper tablecloth. I made my way to the car to go back home to Paris.

Postscript: I have left-over postcards from the trip. The photos of the wallpaper in the last blog post were taken of the postcards from the museum by an iPhone. I wrote two postcards to friends in Paris, but somehow they got mislaid and were never mailed. Please stay tuned for "The Postcard Project," a report of my blitz-like postcards-from-Paris experiment.

We stayed at Le Dolder: http://www.dolder.fr/

Walllpaper's Beginnings

2010-05-02T19:49:00.000+02:00

Rixheim

What to 'do' on vacation? Since my suggestion of farniente was voted down, we took off for a butterfly farm in Hunawihr not too far from our hotel. In the hot, humid, greenhouse like atmosphere live hundreds of butterflies flying freely, landing on the many flowers in the enclosure, and sometimes on the visitors themselves and living their ten days of lifespan. Apparently in nature, where there are predators, their life span is even shorter.

In the gift shop of the butterfly house I picked up a guide to the area and saw that there is a Museum of

Wallpaper which was created by the very old and famous house of Zuber. So on the last day of April we started out for Rixheim, a rather non-descript village except for the Zuber premises, which also houses the Hotel de Ville (!)

The old machines are on display and the history of the manufacture of 'papier peint' (wallpaper) is explained on the museum's first floor. We watched an excellent short film about how wallpaper is made, and learned that the patterns from the 1700's and 1800's can still be reproduced because Zuber has kept all the woodblocks, all the stencils. It's a painstaking and unforgiving process, the quintessence of artisanal work.

I hurried through til the third floor where the panoramic wallpaper is on display. Here in well-lit rooms are displayed scenes from history, from exotic places like Brazil and India, and even an American wallpaper that Jacqueline Kennedy chose for the White House that depicts soldiers at West Point, the Boston Harbor, (illustrated, right) and Niagara Falls. (And, theoretically, this wallpaper can be reproduced today, but I guess if you have to ask how much it would cost, you can't afford it.)

www.museepapierpeint.org/

Top: detail of wallpaper called "Les vues d'Amérique du Nord," the port of Boston. From a drawing of Jean-Julien Deltil. Manufacture Zuber & Cie, 1834, reproduced in the XX century.

Bottom: "Fleur Second Empire," repeating motif, unknown manufacture (French) circa 1860.

Out of Paris

2010-04-30T14:48:00.000+02:00

A week in Alsace

It was time for a vacation and since we were booking flights in the time of the volcano, decided to stay in France but to try something a little exotic, and we chose Alsace. Perhaps Strasbourg could also be named the 'Venice of the North' along with Amsterdam. We stayed in a little inn in Germany just over the border and visited Strasbourg over two days.

It's a vibrant and beautiful city, Strasbourg. I kept thinking I was in Germany, or Amsterdam. The French have a word for it: "dépaysé" which means feeling out of one's country. The cathedral is one of the wonders of the world, or should be. To look up at the spire from the ground is to get vertigo. It is a masterpiece to flamboyant Gothic and to faith.

The illustration is of the town of Kaysersberg, a short drive from Strasbourg and where we had a lunch of a kind of cheese pizza, flamkeuken, a specialty of the region. This place is completely out of time...

Makin' copies...

2010-03-31T14:36:00.004+02:00

WH Smith book store on the rue de Rivoli near the Louvre carries the Sunday New York Times and so on Monday, knowing what I knew, I went by metro, plunked down €16 for all those pages of newsprint, and saw for myself that I really was on the first page of the "Style" section, as my brother from N.J. had called to tell me (although it was my daughter Lucy in NYC who first alerted him to the fact.)

Since the article appeared, I am amazed at just how many people who don't live in NY actually read the Times! But it's the internet, Jake. They read it online.

And so I have made a couple of resolutions: to answer as soon as possible anyone who writes to comment on the article; to actually go to "O Chateau," the Hidden Kitchen, Chez Nous, Chez Vous, and any other concern that is mentioned in the article.

The next day, I went to my favorite printer at M° Jules Joffrin, ABG Réprographie, who have made postcard invitations of art shows in the past for me, and made color copies of the article to send to people who might like to have the hard copy.

A note about the photo: Owen Franken took the photo, and has posted on his website many, many more of our afternoon in early March: www.owenfranken.com

The artist Christian Gorget is to my right. His paintings are on the walls. The other people are my friends who are too shy to have their names mentioned in print!

On to the next thing: The Almost Spring ART ROuNDuP here on Saturday, April 10 when we will take a look at art shows, openings, happenings and every sort of doing, coming or going coming up in the very near future. In Paris and all over the world. Send me your suggestions.

Do you want to know a secret (Paris)?

2010-03-27T13:54:00.003+01:00

Yesterday's New York Times article that includes chez Grace as part of a secret Paris:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/28/fashion/28hiddenparis.html?ref=style

Thanks to Seth Sherwood for damn good reporting - except for Aline and Olivier, all other secret places were unknown to me!

Thanks, too, to Owen Franken for his luminous, luscious photographs and for bringing a sense of fun to the assignment.

My phone numbers have changed. Please note that the landline is now +33 1 42 52 85 06 and the cellphone +33 6 61 81 76 74. But please email me at grace.teshima@gmail.com with your comments about the article. And also any secrets you might want to tell...

Operation: Pictures for the Times II

2010-03-06T08:56:00.006+01:00

The Story of the FLASH Closing Party Sunday Pot-Luck Brunch chez Grace tomorrow

One of the delights of life in Paris is having the time for continual discovery. Discovering new artists and venues and meeting new people makes my life here a joy. Aline Geller created the Box as an art space in a home setting and it is the summum of both discovery (of new artists and also the fact that her little place is on a countrified lane right in the very tawdry Pigalle) and an example of secret Paris that you might not find on your first trip here. She gives a dinner every month and the last time I went I met a journalist who was interviewing her for a piece in the travel section of the New York Times.

The show coming up here was Louisa Dusinberre's big paintings and Seth Sherwood, the New York Times journalist showed up, sat me down on my bed, and pulled out a tape recorder. I have no idea what I said because in the heat of the moment (and Louisa did interrupt because lo and behold, there had been a sale in my absence), I did rather babble. Several weeks later, the Times sent a photographer to take photos for the article.

By that time it was Jacqueline Desarmenien taking down her show and I had an eyepatch on my eye because of an injury. I also brought artist-in-residence Carl Labrosse into the pictures because I am very taken with his spray-painted stencil work (called "pochoirs" in French). The photographer spent several hours here and ever since the article was supposed to come out I have been checking the NY Times travel section online twice a day.

But the photo editor at the newspaper deemed that the photos were not dynamic enough and since the article was about a vernissage, they needed photos of a vernissage.

What do do? The problem of getting those photos was that the next vernissage is at the end of May - two months away.

The job of taking the photos has fallen to another Times photographer, Owen Franken, who is a friend and big fan of chez Grace, world traveller and canny political analyst whose photos of food and drink belie the fact that he really went to MIT to become a physicist. But he is a problem solver too, and when we put our heads together we came up with the logical solution to getting vernissage pictures: have a vernissage! (Tomorrow!)

Since Christian Gorget will be coming next week to take down his show, the next right thing seemed to be to have a closing party here and hope that everybody wasn't completely booked up on a Sunday afternoon. As I write, besides the the photographer, the artist, and me, there are two "maybes." Ha! We have a quorum.

I will end with an edited paragraph from Wikipedia's entry for the word "labyrinth":

"In colloquial English labyrinth is generally synonymous with maze, ...but maze refers to a complex branching puzzle with choices of path and direction; while a...labyrinth has only a single, non-branching path, which leads to the center. A labyrinth...has an unambiguous route to the center and back and is not designed to be difficult to navigate."

Life might seem to be a maze, but really, it is only a labyrinth.

In the picture: friends at Christian's vernissage. Among the paintings shown: "Rouge brun," "Ogre bleu," "Assemblage cyclopéen," and "Cancer 97."

Operation: Pictures for the Times

2010-03-06T08:17:00.008+01:00

A Labyrinthine Path

Christian Gorget's paintings - twenty-four of them, and three tiny ones, one of which was sold to a dear friend and neighbor of mine - have been on show here for a month and a half. It is work done over the past thirteen years and is a unified, compact work in oil that illustrates Christian's own evolution, and I am beginning to see, my own.

I have described the work as "luscious," and it is. But it is also complicated, difficult, and I have admitted in private, tortured. Christian named the show "Labyrinthes Psychedéliques," and more and more I see that visual imagery and connection to the psyche that is his work. It has grown on me. It has taken all this time to accept the elements in his canvasses that I am skittish about admitting in myself: the way that things do not always proceed in a straight line, and how the mind has a way of amusing us, but also fooling us. Me. The way that eroticism is a part of life and informs every decision we make. Mine. I.

The title of the painting shown is "Le Sens de la Vie." In French that has a double meaning, both The Direction of Life and The Meaning of Life. The whole show brings together meaning in all its senses: what it is to be a man or a woman and even why choose one? How do we get meaning? Do we look to astrology and esoterism? Mythology? How can we be mature, stay young, find our way through life's twists and turns?

(to be continued)

"Le Sens de la Vie," 2007, 16 inches x 16 inches, oil on canvas, price on request.

Waiting for a Baby

2009-12-18T06:44:00.012+01:00

Insomnia

When Manuela Luchtmeijer and her husband decided to adopt a child, the long process of paperwork and waiting began. And so too began her response as an artist to the emotional, raw energy produced by waiting and wanting to know if they would be approved to be parents. She couldn't sleep, so she painted. And when their bab(ies) arrived, she conceived of a series to commemorate this time.

Sixteen out of the twenty-six canvasses in the show that closed here last night are black, and indeed, the name of the show is "The Colors of Black." Out of Manuela's insomnia came a body of work that plays with that "color," "the perfect absorber of light," symbol of darkness and depression that goes deep into it and comes out a triumphant play of movement and a meditation of texture.

Some of the black canvasses have blue in them. Indigo adds hope and the swirling strokes in one tryptich called "Insomnia" recall a view of the earth from space. And some of paintings, even though they read "black" have a mixture of many colors and layers of oil that took months to dry, she says, and I noticed living with them here for two weeks, are ever-changing depending on the light. The built-up paint creates a "relief" - peaks and points of paint that is like a topographical map.

The second part of the show is called "Annunciation," or the announcement, in Manuela and Thomas's case the acceptance of their application to adopt a child. In English, a euphenism for pregnancy is "expecting a baby." In French, "attendre un enfant," means literally, "waiting for a baby." Their waiting was rewarded when they learned that they were to be the parents of twins!

And so they travelled to meet their new babies and bring them home to Paris. Manuela jokes that even though her insomnia theoretically ended, she had to be awake nights with the twins and so she still was sleep-deprived. But very grateful.

The third part of the show is named "Madonna," and differs from the rest of the show in that they are figurative and done in acrylic. To express the last part of the series and the feelings that were so overwhelming, she felt the need to work more quickly and moved away from abstraction to a more impulsive way to depict her new reality.

Pictured: "l'Immaculée Conception," a tour de force of red, black and depth and a sly take on what adoption is. This conception was immaculate, there was no original sin involved, nothing but pure motives here and this purity shone through in Manuela's face when she told me her story when I visited her atelier three Fridays ago.

The twins, a boy and a girl, are almost three years old now. They speak French and Dutch and came with their French grandmother to the vernissage, recognized their mother's paintings and enjoyed the attention they got from the crowd. They won't understand til they grow up that unborn they were the muse of their mother's best work to date.

"l'Annunciation," 120 cm. x 150 cm., oil on canvas. Price on request.

http://manuelaluchtmeijer.com