Hanging the show

Hanging your own show is hard enough; hanging a 50-person student show gets even more difficult. Alan and the rest of the students spent most of the day working on getting all the artwork up; Alan ended up with one photo in the metals and jewelry room because they ran out of space in the landscape room. Everyone is excited for tomorrow. I hope it goes well!

Alan's are the two big ones and the two on the right.

I went a walk around the village in the afternoon – it’s hard to start saying goodbye but our days our getting shorter! We will fly home one week from today. I almost think I will wake up on our first day home and feel this was all one very long and detailed dream…

Mt. Ventoux has snow! We hope to go to the top next week.

The fight of the ninja dust-bunnies

I officially strongly dislike framing. Well, I supposed I should amend that to say “dirty glass and dust in a frame which means that it takes you a million tries to get it to look good.” I spent yesterday cleaning all the glass and frames for Alan (we mentioned the “frame lottery” before, and the frames have just been sitting in a cave since their last use – yuck) after he broke a piece of glass. Then today, part way through our pile of 14 frames, I broke a piece of glass from one of the new frames. I swear I was just picking it up... sigh. Thank goodness we were not the only ones with glass issues and SCAD was doing another glass run to Mr. Bricolage! While it was nice to have the house to spread out in, it is so dusty in here that it took forever to get the glass clean, as the moment you turned away more dust would settle! But finally everything was finished, and I have to say it looks really good! I hope everything sells… or at least a few of them. They say that every time they have this final show it is really hit or miss how much sells, so we don’t have any expectations. If we were at home there are a couple I would secretly hope don’t sell because I want to hang them up in our apartment! But unfortunately our luggage is not going to accommodate framed artwork.

The students were supposed to start hanging the undergraduate work at 4:30pm, but for some reason it got pushed back till tomorrow. So Alan and Michelle, the other grad student, went ahead and hung their work after dinner. They have a little gallery all to themselves called the Blue Gallery (it has a lovely blue door, and shutters). Alan’s work takes up the two smaller walls and Michelle has the third longer wall. I think I like Alan’s photos even more hanging up! Art is funny like that – presentation can change how much I like or don’t like it quite a bit. I hope some of the people who come like it as much as I do :)

Goodbye to Mom and Dad

We got up and left at 7:30am to take my parents to the Marseille airport.  We actually got stuck in traffic for the first time since our arrival; but luckily it only took us about 15 minutes extra, with the hold up due only to heavy morning rush hour. It was sad to say good-bye, and the house felt very empty we returned to Lacoste.

Alan and I would both like to thank my parents, without whom we would not have been able to come here to France. I hope that they had as good a time as we had.

Mom, thanks for the bread every morning, buying us treats whenever we wanted something yummy, for talking to everyone in French and arranging everything even though it’s not your favorite thing to do, and packing all the picnic lunches we couldn’t have done without.

Dad, thanks for bringing an extra lens for us to use, and for always letting Alan borrow your camera equipment, for driving us around, washing the dishes every night, and never giving up on retelling your favorite jokes : )

Love you both, glad you made it home safe and sound. We miss you!

Menerbes, Mr. Bricolage, and French bread

Tomorrow my parent’s fly home; can it really be that time already?! Dad wanted to go for a walk around Ménerbes that we’d done before, so we set out, noting how different things looked than the last time we’d been. The olives continue to ripen on the trees; I really want to see them harvested, but haven’t so far. Well, we did see one old man picking the lone olive tree just below our house across from the Marie (the town hall) – he was sitting on the stone wall beneath it and filling his bucket; he told Mom that he walk going to make olive oil with them. Most of the olives still seemed green to me, but maybe it doesn’t matter for oil?

I found this just growing by the road.
I wanted to take it home and eat it!

Life is beautiful. Yes, yes it is.

After walking all the way around the hill we returned to Ménerbes proper, only to find the route barre (road closed)! Tourist season is over, and all the towns seem to be hurrying to get things fixed up before winter comes. Of course, here in Lacoste it has taken them the whole time we’ve been here to pave and paint a little parking terrace with six spots… and all the roads in the center of Ménerbes are torn up! We had thought that since we were walking, it wouldn’t be a problem; however, the road we came down was completely filled with a backhoe, leaving no room even for walking on either side. Not wanting to walk all the way back the way we came, we tried a few roads till we found one that lead us back around, through the construction (but only torn-up roads and no machines) to our car.

Another machine on one of the still intact streets.

The afternoon found us once again visiting Mr. Bricolage; Alan had a few frames that need glass, so Dad got to see his favorite store once more. We then made a quick run to the grocery store; and, since it is Monday and the épicerie in town is closed, we had to get bread too. French bread… now that is one thing I will miss, although it is sometimes quite the ordeal to get! Lacoste only has a bakery in the tourist season because Pierre Cardin, who owns the chateau, bought out the bakery but then only has it open in the summer months when it is most profitable. Since the French buy bread every morning, the little épicerie (grocery store, although really it is just the only little shop it town that carries odds and ends of everything from fresh eggs to Sudoku books) sells bread, which it gets fresh each morning from a bakery. They’ve used three different bakeries since we’ve been here, and the second one was our favorite, although the croissants from this last one might be the best.

The traditional baguette is not our favorite, as it goes stale before you can say you want a slice, and so we stick to the “special” breads: cereal, complet, and compagne. Every bakery has these breads, but they are very general terms, as each baker’s version is very different, with a few basic similarities; cereal breads have seeds, like poppy, sesame, and sunflower, complet is whole wheat, and compagne is a heavy white (compagne means “country”). Cereal is our favorite. Nut bread is another one we try sometimes, as Mom had a really good loaf when they were in Viason-la-Romain, but we haven’t found as good a one down here. They are made with walnuts and walnut flour, and seem to come out a little dry more often than not. We go through about two loaves a day, and so every morning Mom trots down to the bakery to stand in line with the locals and pick us up some more bread; if we’ve been good, she might even bring us a croissant! So on days when the store is closed, we are always happy to be near another bakery or grocery store to get our fill of this French tradition.

A nut bread and a cereal bread.

In the afternoon, Mom and Dad worked on packing. The rain finally looked like it was really going to come down around four o’clock, so Mom and I hurried out for one last walk. Another dog adopted us as we walked through the valley, and Mom was worried he was going to come all the way home with us! Luckily he stopped when we got to the edge of the village, and hopefully found his way home.