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The decorated house, as pictured above, is located on a street in Lorca, a municipality with over 91,000 inhabitants (2016) in the south-east of Spain.  Life and works This decoration was created by Acacia Mateo Pérez-Castejón (25 September 1905 - 1 May 2003), simply referred to as Acacia Mateo. He was born in Motril, a municipality about 250 km south-east of Lorca.
Why his parents moved from Motril to Lorca is unknown, just as not everything is known about Mateo's professional life.  Mateo did his military service in Barcelona. Here he came into contact with the art that Gaudi created. He was particularly struck when he saw that all kinds of buildings were decorated with ceramics. This must have given him the idea to do the same with the house in Lorca that he moved into after his time in Barcelona. The house is situated in a street with adjoining buildings, both apartment flats and simple family homes. Mateo's house belongs to the latter category, with a downstairs space, an upstairs space and a roof terrace. The images above show that the right balcony seen from the street is missing the railing, which was caused by a passing truck hitting it.
Mateo began decorating the façade in the early 1930s and worked on it for about twenty years. The style he worked in is trencadís, an approach that was also widely used by Gaudi and is characterized by the use of small pieces of ceramic from stone objects or marble tiles, which are used to create various forms of mosaic. The interior is also richly decorated. Tables, beds and bedside tables are equipped with trencadis, there is a covered fountain and also a kind of cave. There are no images of it, because after Mateo's death in 2003 the house was no longer inhabited and not accessible anymore On May 11, 2011, the city of Lorca was hit by two earthquakes. The decorated front of the house remained unscathed, but it is possible that because of the earthquake two small buildings on the roof collapsed, which is not visible from the street. In 2021 the decorated house was classified as a protected monument by the municipality. A self-decorated grave monument
In the local cemetery Parroquial San Cristóbal, in 1963 Mateo created a funerary monument to commemorate the death of his father that year. It was later completed with decorations after the deaths of his mother and brother, and Mateo himself will also be buried there. The monument is decorated in the same style with colorful trencadís and is surrounded by sculpted benches, wavy fences and flower pots.  Documentation Acacia Mateo Decorated House Calle Ortgea Melgares 15 Lorca, region Murcia, Spain can be seen from the street |
November 22, 2024
Acacia Mateo, Casa decorada / Decorated house
November 13, 2024
Carmela Ricco and Barbara Mula, Parco Lallo
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| images by Parca Lallo, as published on Google Streetview |
The municipality of La Maddalena in Italy includes an entire island with an area of approximately 50 km² and about 11,000 inhabitants (November 2013). The island is located north of the main island of Sardinia.
In the southeast of La Maddalena, near the community of Moneta, located along a public road, there is an art environment called Parco Lallo.
With regard to his site, there are currently (November 2024) developments taking place which will be described below.
The image above gives a certain impression of the location of the site in a bend of the road, but on Google Streetview this can be seen much better
The house of Carmela Ricco, born in 1952 and retired restaurant manager, who together with her daughter Barbara Mula created Parco Lallo, is located near the bend in the road.
It all began when Carmela's son Roberto, who lived only a short time, from 1975 to 1995, as a young man began tending the area along the road near the house by weeding and establishing all kinds of plants and trees.
After Roberto had passed away, the areas along the road were maintained by Carmela and Barbara. this mainly to prevent that these areas would become an open-air dump.
And then, around 2010 the actual development of the art environment began.
As can be seen on the images in this post, nestled between flowers, trees and bushes a world of all kinds of small items such as toys, dolls and vases emerged.
The site also got some larger items, such as Santa Claus and all kinds of fairy tale characters.
Visitors of this characteristic art environment, felt as if ended up in a fairytale world and certainly for children a visit was a special experience, which made them very happy.
However, the local authorities were not very happy with the creation, because it had not come about on private property, but in public space and this probably without official approval.
And so it happened that in the fall of 2024, the municipality announced that the art environment had to disappear.
This was something Carmela and Barbara had not counted on, but after the initial shock had been overcome, an action was set up, also thanks to the support of Gabriele Minna, initiator of the documentation of art environments in Italy.
This action included that residents of Maddalena in particular, but also other interested parties, were invited to take a number of items that are part of the site under their care. In this way, the creations would be preserved and could be reinstalled in the event of a continuation of the art environment at the current location or elsewhere.
To better publicize the action, an account called Parco Lallo, Territorial action babelica, was opened on Facebook on November 4, 2024, edited by Carmela and Gabriele, which quickly gathered more than 700 interested parties.
The process of taking creations under the care of friends of the site has now started and is attracting many interested participants.
It is an approach that, to my knowledge, has not been used before in the field of art environments.
The intention is to create a new art environment, filled with the creations that have been given into storage. If that fails, then because of the wide distribution of the creations of the current site, the memory will remain alive in a very wide circle.
Documentation
* Public group about Parco Lallo on Facebook, with an introductory article by Gabriele Mina
* Article (2024) about Parco Lallo in Italian website Costruttori di Babele
Video
* Video (Facebook, 2.31) by Marta D'Amico with images of a walk on November 7, 2024 ending at Parca Lallo, with shots of creations still present
Carmela Ricco and Barbara Mula
Parco Lallo
Via Amerigo Vespucci, 32
07024 Isola de La Maddalena, dept Olbia-Tempio, region Sardinia, Italy
can be seen from the road
can be seen from the road
November 01, 2024
Nadiya Kutsa, Прикрашені будинки / Decorated houses
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| images are screenprints from the video in the documentation |
Dzhurynska Slobidka is a small village with about 300 inhabitants in western Ukraine.
Recently, at the end of October 2024, a short film appeared on the Facebook page of the regional TV channel Ternopil 1 in which an inhabitant told how she had provided the outside of her house and the neighbors' house with decorations.
She told the reporter that she started decorating her house three years earlier, in 2021. She had not done any decorative or artistic activity during her life and so there is no doubt hat she is a non-professional.
The decorated walls evoke a special atmosphere, especially because to a large extent the stones. partly painted in all kinds of colours. are depicted as if they were in reality the constructional elements of the walls.
These decorative stones, which completely cover the walls of the house, form a defining. basic element of this art environment.
But there are also freestanding decorative elements to be seen, such as the owl and the frog depicted above and the small cylindrical structure in the second image from the top.
The large quantity of partly colourful stones that decorate the walls are often interspersed with trees and shrubs that are provided with a green canopy.
This art environment as a whole makes a calm, controlled impression, as if an experienced artist has effortlessly made a creation.
The neighbours house
This is equally true of the decorations that Nadya Kutsa has applied to the walls of her neighbours' house, a project she started after finishing the beautification of her own home.
Here too we see painted stones alternating with trees with green foliage, all done in a more modest style.
Apart from the video with accompanying explanation on Facebook, and the similar publication in the magazine of the TV channel, there is no other source available about these two Ukrainian art environments.
Documentation
* Video by Ukrainian TV Ternopil 1, on Facebook, October 23, 2024
thanks to Caroline Dahyot, who pointed me to the video about these creations
Nadiya Kutsa
Decorated houses
No address available
Village of Dzhurynska Slobidka, Chortkiv district, Ternopil region, Ukraine
can be seen from the street
October 25, 2024
Adam Szubski, Galeria Rzezby Adam Szubski / Sculpture Gallery Adam Szubski
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| all images published here in agreement with Justyna Orlovska, from her website Off the beaten track |
Zgon is a small village with about 150 inhabitants, part of the municipality of Piecki, located in the north-east of Poland in the Warmian-Masurian region. The village is located south of a large lake called Mokre and has a pictorial appearance, especially because of the atmosphere evoked by the many old-style houses.
The village is intersected by the national road DK58 and where this road runs right along the lake, there is a special house, equipped as it is with a sculpture garden.
Take a look at Google Streetview, which has the scene at the location.
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The sculpture garden is a creation of Adam Szubski (1931-2008), who was born in Warsaw.
His father, Stefan Szubski, had a job in metalworking and won many prizes in the years before the Second World War.
Adam Szubski became a stonemason, but he also worked with metal, especially with sheet zinc, .a material he also used at that time to create works of art.
Indeed, although he had no artistic training, he showed in the 1960s that he was motivated and had a talent to create works of art.
He was admitted as a member of the Association of Polish Artists and exhibited his work not only in Warsaw in a café on the Old Town Square, but later also in museums in for example Germany, Italy and Austria.
Szubski had married Anna Sierpińska and in 1972 the couple moved to Zgon to live in a cottage located along the national road DK58 where it runs right next to the lake. Buying the house also meant that the couple saved it from demolition because of its poor condition.
One of the first projects they undertook was to renovate the hundred-year-old house, which they did by restoring the original interior as much as possible and refurbishing and reusing what was left of the equipment from earlier years, such as old stoves and fireplaces. By doing this the house was eventually recognized as a monument
The FACES project
In the 1990s, when Szubski was in his sixties, he became inspired by the idea to decorate the garden near the house and so he began making sculptures using a mixture of cement, resins, acrylic and paint.
It became a project, called Faces, which resulted in some 200 creations, mainly of human heads.
These heads got different shapes, sizes and expressions, sometimes realistic, sometimes fantastic, but occasionally also grotesque, strange or creepy for some people visiting the site.
,.,.
The sculptures depicted heads of famous people, friends, acquaintances and residents, but also .characters from mythology, fairy tales and literature.
Among the celebrities were depictions of people such as Pope John Paul II (a cardinal from Poland, elected pope in 1978), Lech Wałęsa (president of Poland from 1990-1995) and Marilyn Monroe (American actress, 1926-1962).
By the way, as can be seen in the images, besides the collection of heads there are also sculptures that depict people in full length.
Adam Szubski died on November 15, 2008.
His family takes care of the maintenance of the sculptures and occasionally organizes exhibitions and workshops in sculpture
The gallery is open to visitors from May to October.
Documentation
* Article (2024) by Justyna Orlovska on her website Off the beaten track
* Article (2022) by Radosław Łabarzewscy on his website Znalezienie
* Article (undated) on website Mazury24, with a large number of photos
Videos
* Video (2004, YouTube, 0.47) by Center for Education and Cultural Initiatives in Olsztyn.
* Video (2022, YouTube, 1.41) by Znalezienie
Adam Szubski
Sculpture Gallery Adam Szubski
at No. 40 along national road DK58
village of Zgon, Miragowski department, Warmian-Masurian region. Poland
can be seen from the road
October 18, 2024
Florence Marie, La Forge / The Forge
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| all images courtesy of Sophie Lepetit, from her website |
Honfleur is a commune in France with over 6,700 inhabitants (January 2021), located on the south side of the river Seine where it flows into the Channel.
Situated in the middle of a block of houses in the old city center, accessible via a side street through a gate in the rue de la Foulerie, there is a building that once housed a forge, a building whose interior and exterior these days have been transformed into an art environment.
The image above shows, seen from the side of the decorated garden, the entrance gate at the end of the side street.
Here Florence Marie would realise her major project, in which, after renovating a messy wall in the outside space into a large fresco, she added all kinds of colourful creations to the exterior, as well as to the walls of the rooms of the residential building.
Life and works
This art environment is an impressive creation by Florence Marie, who was born on April 17, 1946 in Le Havre, a commune also located at the mouth of the Seine, but then on the north side, diagonally opposite Honfleur.
At a young age Florence loved reading literature and after her school years in Le Havre, she went to Paris to study philosophy and theatre.
She was active in writing and painting and had a house with a small studio on the Place Saint-Georges in Montmartre.
In 1994, in her late 40s, she moved to Honfleur, where she had found new accommodation in the former forge building which, in addition to a large outdoor space, included a 400 m2 workshop and a house with several floors.
The images above and around give an impression of the various creations
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Florence Marie, who did not have an art education, does not consider herself an art brut artist too.
She prefers to see herself as an adventurer, but an adventurer who has the books of writers such as Novalis, Virginia Woolf and Flaubert in her luggage, an adventurer who loves kings and queens, angels and symbols.
The decorations she made are certainly not small-scale, on the contrary, the creations that adorn the walls are often man-sized.
In the 2000 m² space outside there are even very large creations, mostly made of recycled material, such as the depiction of an angel of the apocalypse, provided with silver wings, announcing to a black Virgin the birth of a star child.
And there is also a life-size giraffe hanging from the roof on a chimney, partly replacing it.
The interior of the house is also filled with a lot of fascinating creative work. The whole is a work of art in itself.
There are all kinds of sculptures, mosaic creations, stained glass cabinets, colorful furniture, painted carpets......
In one of the relatively spacious rooms inside, various events are organized nowadays, where music is alternated with dance, storytelling and the like. These are announced on Florence Marie's Facebook page.
An association Les Amis de la Forge has also been founded, which develops all kinds of activities to support and further develop Florence Marie's project.
Documentation
* Facebook
* Article on the website of the Honfleur tourist office
* Article by Marie Gratepanche on the weblog of Sophie Lepetit
* Article on the website of the Agnes Szaboova gallery
Florence Marie
La forge
25 rue de la Foulerie,
14600 Honfleur, dept Calvados, region Normandie, France
visitors welcome on appointment
Google Streetview access to the side street, which leads to the entrance of the garden
October 11, 2024
Mauno Suonpää; Pahkaparatiisi / Gnarl paradise
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| images are screenprints from the video in the documentation |
Pahkaparatiisi is in English Gnarl Paradise and Gnarl stands for: a rough, knotty protuberance, especially on a tree. Just one more step and we begin to understand what it's all about: protuberance, that's an English word that means something like a knob, an outgrowth or a washout .....
The images in this article show the characteristics of the items collected in the art environment reviewed here, namely all kinds of outgrowths of trees in particular, which have a specific shape that is so appealing that, when brought together in an extensive collection, they radiate an artistic quality.
Life and works
The one who created this art environment is Mauno Suonpää, who was born in 1932 in Huittinen, a community of around 9500 inhabitants in the region Satakunta in the south-west of Finland.
He was raised in a house outside the built-up area of Huittinen, situated on a wooded area where the Gnarl Paradise would later be located and of which it is now a part.
He started working in the forest at the age of 15, first with the help of horses, later with a tractor bought in 1956.
Suonpää did his work in the forest with an open eye for special shapes and colours that nature brought out around him. He began to see that nature produces all kinds of shapes in which you can recognize figures of people, animals or all kinds of items.
And then, at a certain moment he began to collect everything that he saw as special in the forest.
Here are some examples of what Suonpää collected.
In the image above on the left, an animal with a snout, such as a beaver, can be seen, while in the image above on the right, it appears that an owl is looking out through a hole in a tree.
In the image above, the shape of a bird is very clearly recognizable.
Nature also produces items that can be seen as letters and numbers. The collection assembled by Suonpää includes 300 letters and 75 numbers formed by nature.
The letters include the entire alphabet, and the numbers zero through nine can also be seen.
Suonpää has made every effort to ensure that the forest with the house where he grew up has retained its original, natural character as much as possible.
He has arranged that all special trees have been given a name and a number, placed on a copper plate, which is a cataloguing that can be of importance for future generations.
His work has not gone unnoticed in public administration circles, as he has received a medal from both the President of Finland and the city of Huttinen.
The site has become an art environment
Around the turn of the century Suonpää decided to transform the forest area and the buildings with the collection into an art environment that can be visited by the public.
To this end, the existing accommodations have been transformed into exhibition rooms and there is a modest opportunity for visitors to use a consumption and buy souvenirs.
Documentation
* Website Pahkaparatiisi
* Article on the website of the Finnish Association for rurale culture and education MSL
* Article in local newspaper My Huittinen
Video
* Video by Selkäkankaan rölli (September 2023, YouTube, 38'57")
Mauno Suonpää
Pahkaparatiisi
Suonpääntie 43
32700 Huittinen, dept West-Finland, region Satakunta, Finland
in July open every day from 12-18, in other months visits on appointment
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