Yes, that is indeed a robot beside Nôtre Dame d’Evreux and the old Gallo-Roman wall: it’s one of several imaginatively created from found and recycled materials and installed in the park. Juxtaposition of the old and the new is pretty typical of life here, but it doesn’t usually include robots.
Christy
From the street one doesn’t suspect the presence of this sunny retreat behind the house.
The right side of this sketchbook spread is on the next post.
At last I have a scanner and am beginning to scan sketchbook pages to post. Here is the first, from the day of departure. (Click once, then again to see it larger.)
A poem by Albert Garcia in celebration of the poignant, brief-and-boundless late summer.
It’s ripe, the melon
by our sink. Yellow,
bee-bitten, soft, it perfumes
the house too sweetly.
At five I wake, the air
mournful in its quiet.
My wife’s eyes swim calmly
under their lids, her mouth and jaw
relaxed, different.
What is happening in the silence
of this house? Curtains
hang heavily from their rods.
Ficus leaves tremble
at my footsteps. Yet
the colors outside are perfect–
orange geranium, blue lobelia.
I wander from room to room
like a man in a museum:
wife, children, books, flowers,
melon. Such still air. Soon
the mid-morning breeze will float in
like tepid water, then hot.
How do I start this day,
I who am unsure
of how my life has happened
or how to proceed
amid this warm and steady sweetness?
—Albert Garcia
Francine
On this day in 2013, we were wandering the fairy-tale streets of Sarlat, a Périgord village of golden limestone, remarkably unchanged since the 16th century, and I sketched the birthplace and childhood home of Étienne de la Boétie (1530-1563), of which this is a detail.
Cliff
Some quickie sketches during our traditional family outing on this day, to celebrate the USA’s birthday along with local dancers and drummers, librarians and launderettes, politicians, piping policemen, and puppy dogs. Happy Fourth of July, everyone!
Melinda
A Hello to July, with a poem by Mary Oliver.
Come with me
into the field of sunflowers.
Their faces are burnished disks,
their dry spines
creak like ship masts,
their green leaves,
so heavy and many,
fill all day with the sticky
sugars of the sun.
Come with me
to visit the sunflowers,
they are shy
but want to be friends;
they have wonderful stories
of when they were young –
the important weather,
the wandering crows.
Don’t be afraid
to ask them questions!
Their bright faces,
which follow the sun,
will listen, and all
those rows of seeds –
each one a new life!
hope for a deeper acquaintance;
each of them, though it stands
in a crowd of many,
like a separate universe,
is lonely, the long work
of turning their lives
into a celebration
is not easy. Come
and let us talk with those modest faces,
the simple garments of leaves,
the coarse roots in the earth
so uprightly burning.
—Mary Oliver
Writer Richard Meryman speaking at the National Gallery of Art. Excerpts from recordings of years of conversations with Andrew Wyeth, and others, are woven into Meryman’s latest book, Andrew Wyeth: A Spoken Self-Portrait.
Think of the now-passed-away artist you greatly admire, and imagine being able to listen to him/her voicing thoughts about life, art, work.
Father Larry Madden
