André Pailloux, Moulins vent/whirligigs

this and the next picture courtesy 

of Sophie Lepetit, from her weblog

This is about an outsider environment in a small comunity in the french Vendee area, facing the Atlantic and often endowed with strong winds. Rather useful to make rotate the abundance of whirligigs located in this site.

Life and works

The mobile devices in the garden have been constructed by André Pailloux (1943). He nowadays is retired, but had a technical job at a shipyard in les Sables-d'Olonne, not far from where he lives. Around 2000, some time before he would be finished with his job, he began decorating his front garden with rotating devices, that in english probably best can be called "whirligigs". 

The site as such has no special name, like mr Pailloux has no special french term to indicate his constructs. They rotate in the wind (the more wind, the better, to some extent) and they are colourful, so colourful, kaleidoscopic colourful.......

The proximity of the ocean implies that the paint quickly goes lost and that the moving parts are easiliy damaged, so Andre Paiiloux has much to do in maintaining the constructs.

Besides the windmills, mr Pailloux also has been decorating some bicycles. The next picture, by Bruno Montpied, shows one of these bikes, on which one can really move. It is an item that would not be inappropriate to be exhibited in a museum as an object of kinetic art.

photo by Bruno Montpied, made available by him 

to be published on the weblog les grigris de Sophie

André Pailloux has become active in making paintings too. He has a variety of themes, one of them being ships, like next picture shows.

Documentation, more pictures

* Mr Pailloux's garden is depicted on the cover of the recent book by Bruno Montpied, Éloge des jardins anarchiques, Montreuil-sur-Bois, 2011. The book has a chapter about this environment. Mr Montpied may be the first who in France, on a national level, wrote about the creations of André Pailloux.

* In her weblog Sophie Lepetit has published her impression of the creations (in french) together with a number of pictures: text august 11, 2011, the paintings september 1, 2011, the bike and the paintings september 21, 2011 and more pictures september 29, 2011
* Extract from the Bricoleurs de Paradis movie by Rémy Ricordeau/Bruno Montpied (Youtube, 2'04", uploaded april 2012)

first published oct 2011, revised april 2012 (inserted video)


André Pailloux

Moulins vents

Vendée, France

can be seen from the street