Collective of inhabitants, Minibyen / Mini Village

this image and the next one from Google Maps

In the far north of  Norway, near the small community of Kasfjord, the sign above points to a Minibyen, which is Norwegian for a miniature village. 

And indeed, following the directions one will soon reach an art environment with an extensive ensemble of miniature constructions.

.

this picture and the next five from the weblog of Sophie Lepetit

An art environment created by residents

It is a special art environment, because it was created by residents of the small community of Kasfjord with 269 inhabitants, which is part of the municipality of Harstad, a small town of about 25,000 inhabitants, located 12 km southwest.

The creation, started around 2015, has been largely made from recycled materials. Residents of Kasfjord can participate, for example by contributing a built item themselves. The rule for the houses and other structures that fill the site is 1:10 scale. Articles on the internet about this site talk about a mayor of the miniature village who makes streets and traffic signs himself. This person probably fulfils the role of coordinator who takes care of the general layout of the site.

The miniature city has a lively atmosphere and feels realistic. For example, painters are working in front of the house above left, giving the house a new coat of paint; the painting company's car is in front of the house.

Also there are scenes of sporting events are depicted, where it has been ensured that there is a viewing public.

The ensemble of miniature constructions has grown considerably in size since its inception in 2015. In its current state, which is beautifully documented in the videos in the documentation, it attracts numerous tourists.

There is an account on Facebook, Kasfjord City Minibyen, dedicated to the miniature village. The site contains many photos of the creation and also various stories about the background of scenes that play in or around the buildings that form part of the art environment.

For example, there is a backstory about a scene of a fight outside a café, which is depicted in the miniature village and it is also explained what happened when a cat was rescued from a roof, not with the ladder of a fire truck, because that ladder was too short, but with a helicopter.....

It seems that all these stories are truthful and so this Facebook account might fulfil the function of the local newspaper of Minibyen.

Documentation

* Facebook

* Article and some photos on touristic website Visit Harstad

* Articles with a variety of photos (November 2923) on the (French) weblog of Sophie Lepetit

Videos

* Video (2019, YouTube, 2'43") by Geir Nordly

* Another video (2017, YouTube, 8'00") by Kathrine Witz∅e

Collective of inhabitants

Kasfjord City Mini Village

9402 Kasfjord, Harstad, dept Troms og Finnmark, region Northern Norway, Norway

site can be seen from the street, visitors welcome

Google Streetview, with a variety of photos

Robert Lemaire, Jardin avec constructions cinétiques et autres décorations / Garden with kinetic constructions and other decorations

all photos (by Hubert Bouvet) published here in agreement with

the Inventaire Générale région Hauts de France

On the front of a house along the Rue Nationale in the commune of Sains-en-Gobelle in Northern France, about 40 km south-west of Lille, decorations can still be seen that refer to the years 1980/1999, when particularly in the backyard a special art environment was created,

The surrounding images show the striking feature of this site, namely a number of kinetic constructions in the shape of multi-colored windmills.

Life and works

This art environment was created by Robert Lemaire (1924-2010), who was born in Hersin-Coupigny, near Sains-en-Gohelle, in a family with parents and a brother who were familiar with technology. His mother owned a hardware store, his father was a farrier and his older brother was a plumber.

So it is understandable that young Robert also went in a technical direction. At around 20 years old, he entered the training center of a mining company in Noeux-les-Mines. also near Sains-en-Gohelle, where he received technical training, such as how to work with a lathe.

Lemaire got a job at the mining company as a fitter, in which he worked for many years. He liked to that job because of its precise and meticulous nature, but also a bit because of the noise that came with it. 

When the mining company was closed in the context of the general cessation of coal mining in Northern France, he went to work as a metal worker at a fertilizer factory, where he was granted early retirement in 1979.

Creating colorful windmills

Now 55 years old, Lemaire wasn't the type to take it easy. He started using his skills in working with metal to decorate his living environment with beautiful kinetic constructions in the form of colorful windmills. 

He had bought the house in 1954 and renovated it to live there with his wife from around 1955, but he had not yet paid any attention to the garden. So decorating the garden became his project for the 1980s/1990s.

Using all kinds of everyday items, such as bicycle wheels, iron bowls, rubber balls cut in half, plastic bottles, and the like, he made an ensemble of artistic windmills. all with their own design and with 

component parts welded together where necessary.

All creations were vividly painted with bright colors.

Other decorations

To the kinetic constructions that give the site its special character, Lemaire also added all kinds of decorations, such as animal figures standing in the garden, some of which were not made himself but purchased.

The above red-colored ladybug with many white dots, is one of the first stand alone creations of an animal that Lemaire made.

Elsewhere in the garden are welded metal roosters, one formed from iron chains, the other from metal discs.

Using other metal items, like hubcaps from cars as shown in the image above, Lemaire also made decorations. This image was added to a wall of a shed at the edge of the garden.

The person with a hat is Subito, a cartoon character known in France, created in 1936 by the cartoonist Robert Velter (known as Bozz).

In the image above there is a small figure in the upper right that appears to reside in higher realms, (birds, space vehicles} and sends a lightning bolt to a structure of yellow and green stripes below.

Current situation

Robert Lemaire passed away on October 7, 2010

Today, (2023) a daughter of Lemaire lives in the house along the Route Nationale. She makes every effort to maintain parts of the art environment, but it is not always possible to prevent parts of the site from deteriorating.

Documentation

* Article on the website of the Inventaire Générale région Hauts de France (I would like to acknowledge that the above post is based largely on the information available in this article)

Robert Lemaire

Garden with kinetic constructions and other decorations

8 route National

Sains-en-Gohelle, dept Pas-de-Calais, region Hauts-de-France, France

part of the decorations can be seen from the street

Google Streetview 2009

Gérard Brion, Le Petit Paris / Little Paris

 

the Eiffel Tower as created in 1984
this picture and the next five courtesy of Gérard Brion

In the field of art environments the Eiffel Tower in Paris is a building that is often chosen to replicate by non-professional artists who express themselves in creating singular architecture. Some examples are mentioned at the end of this post. 

The replica of the Eiffel Tower in the image above was made in 1984 by Gerard Brion when he was 14 years old. He made the vertical elements of the structure as such from wood and the connecting crossings from corrugated sheet metal.

Life and works

The tower rose in the vegetable garden of a house, located in the green and open rural area of the municipality of Vaissac, a small community of now some 600 inhabitants in the Tarn et Garonne department of France.

view of the Seine with partly Eiffel Tower

Gérard Brion, who grew up in this house, was already at the age of five making all kinds of drawings, sometimes even including perspective. As a boy he also enjoyed painting and gardening.

He also thought of making miniatures, an idea he realized when in 1984 he saw a TV program about the Champs Elysées in Paris.

So at age 14 he made a replica of the Eiffel Tower and this was the start of a creative project in which he reconstructed in miniature the area in Paris near the tower: the striking buildings, the bridges over the Seine, the roads with busy car traffic, the trees along the roads.... 

 

Place de l'Obélisque

Brion had never been to Paris (that only happened when he was 25), so he did not have his own photos of buildings around the Eiffel Tower and he had to use images in magazines and books to replicate 40 characteristic buildings of the area. In addition, the replicas all had to be manufactured in the same 1:130 scale.

Using recycled materials, Brion built this art environment entirely by hand.

The images in this post show that he has succeeded wonderfully in producing replicas that correspond to reality. an this not only in terms of the similarity of the buildings, but also because of the representation of the liveliness of the great city that is Paris.

In this way it happened that in the vegetable garden of his parental home, on an area of some 500 m², gradually the miniature creation Petit Paris emerged.

Arc de Triomphe 

This development, however, went unnoticed by the general public. In all probability only people from the Vaissac area knew about it.

In the mid-1990s, when the site was already of a certain size, it had not yet been opened to visitors. Brion had moved to Brignoles in the south of France, more than 550 km away. and his father was already beginning to consider abolishing the creation.

But an event occurred that led to the official opening of the site. it's further development and a continuation with many visitors. On August 31, 1997, Lady Diana, member of the British royal family, lost her life in a car accident the tunnel of the Pont de l'Alma in Paris, a place that was part of the site of miniatures. 

Sympathetic residents from the area laid flowers at the location in question. Petit Paris became a place of pilgrimage, and got unparalleled publicity in national newspapers and TV broadcasts, which not only led to a large flow of visitors, but also to an irrepressible national fame.

Brion returned to Vaissac to help his father deal with the flow of visitors and the events made him decide to restart the further development of the site.

Notre Dame

 

And so it happened that in 2002 Petit-Paris officially opened as a tourist attraction. 

Brion's collection of reproductions he had made of paintings in the Louvre Museum in Paris, the Mona Lisa included, was added to the site, a small-scale museum called Petit Louvre.

Another new part of the site was la Petite-France, a place where famous French buildings can be seen in miniature, such as castles along the Loire and the Cathedral of Strasbourg.

Intended relocation of the site to another location

Currently (2023) Gerard Brion intends to move the art environment, which has been open to the public for more than twenty years, to a location in the community of Champagne in the Chharente Maritime department, an area in France bordering the Atlantic Ocean. He already owns a 3-hectare site there.

The p[an has been explained in detail on a separate website Projet Petit Paris. There is a possibility of co-financing the new project.

The website includes a video (see below) with information about the realization and design of the current art environment. The intended move should be completed in 2025.

Assemblée Nationale

Documentation

* Website of Le Petit Paris

* Facebook account of Le Petit Paris 

* Entry on TripAdvisor with a series of photos

* Article on website Vivre Paris

* Article (August 2023) in regional journal L'Opinion 

* Website Projet Petit Paris about the relocation of the site

Videos

* Video (September 2023) on the site of NEO on Facebook with Gérard Brion talking about the development of Petit Paris

 

* Video (YouTube, May 2023, 7'37" by Petit Paris Parc

Note

Here are some examples of art environments in this blog that feature the Eiffel Tower: Henri Travert in France, Henk Olthof in the Netherlands, Albert Diekmann in Germany, Jaan Alliksoo in Estonia and Atom Grigoryan in Russia.

Gérard Brion

Petit Paris

3225 route des Teularios,

82800 Vaissac, dept Tarn et Garonne, region Occitanie, France

visitors welcome

Google Maps, with pictures

Fifteenth anniversary of this weblog

a sculpture by Fernand Châtelain,
courtesy of Marcello 13 (Flickr)

Bonjour aux promeneurs, Hello walkers,

Today, November 11, 2023 this weblog exists fifteen years. Up till now it includes 635 reviews of art environments in Europe made by non-professional artists.

As in previous years here are some data about numbers and origin of visitors of this blog and about most viewed art environments.

Number of visitors

On November 10th, 2022 the all time number of visitors was 1,141.432. 

On November 10th, 2023 it was 1,252.316,  so there is an increase of 110.884 visitors, or on the average 305 visitors a day. 

Over the period 2021-2022 the average was 521, and the year before it was 257. The average number of visitors over 2021/22 may have been an outlier, around 300 visitors per day being the usual number.

All time page views by country

As in previous years here is the all time rank of countries as regards page-views (4000 >, as on November 10)

        Netherlands 221000

        United States 181000

        Ireland 139000

        United Kingdom 107000

        France 76000

        Italy 61000

        Germany 38000

        Russia 36000

        Australia 23000

        Spain 16000

        Poland 12000

        Singapore 12000

        Canada 8000

        Hungary 8000

        Japan 7000

        Austria 4000

        Belgium 4000

        Greece 4000

        Indonesia 4000

        Other 136000

​

This overview shows that apart from Australia, Singapore, Japan and Indonesia, most visitors come from the countries in North America and in Western and Eastern Europe, which is pretty much the target group this weblog wants to reach.   

Most viewed sites all time

        1.  Robert Garcet, Belgium, Eben-Ezer Tower, 6647

        2   Bill and Elisabeth Charge, England UK, Watford shell garden, 6612

        3.  Joseph Ferdinand Cheval, France, Palais Idéal, 6598
        4.  John and Jo Mew, Braylsham Castle, England UK, 6005

        5.  Polina Rayko, Ukraine, Decorated House, 5708      

        6.  Sidney Dowdeswell, England UK. Mosaic and shell garden, 5172

        7.  Jose Maria Garrido, Spain,  El Museo del Mar, 5162

        8.  Oreste Fernando Nannetti, Italy, Wall inscriptions, 4875

        9.  Roy McCormack, England UK, Beach flint sculpture garden,, 4846
      10.  Robert Tatin, France, Maison des champs, 4840
      

Bill and Elisabeth Charge, Watford shell garden, who have been in first place in recent years, are now in second place

 Chomo, France, Préludian art, have left the top ten, to be replaced by John and Jo Mew, who in the 1990s singlehandedly constructed Braylsham Castle and Sidney Dowdeswell, who in 1921 began transforming the garden of his house into a mosaic and shell garden.

   

The art environment by Polina Rayko (1928-2004) from Ukraine whose decorated house was located in the war zone near Kherson, increased in the number of visitors. In the context of Russia's war with Ukraine, in early June 2023 a dam on the Dnieper River was blown up, causing a tidal wave that destroyed all the decorations on the walls of Polina's house.

Next an overview of places 11 to 20:

     11. Bodan Litnianski, France, Garden of shells,, 4770

     12. Chomo, France, Préludian art, 4669

     13. Karl Junker, Germany, Junker's House,  4634
     14. José Garcia Martin, Canaries, Spain, Sculpture garden, 4599

     15. Gustav Nagel, Germany, Paradise Garden, 4536
     16. Abbé Fouré, France, Sculpted rocks, 4468
     17  Joseph Pujiula i Vila, Spain, Labyrinth, 4452

     18. Stephen Wright, England UK, House of dreams museum, 4224

     19, Francisco González Grajera, Spain, Decorated house, 4097
     20. Julius Klingebiel, Germany, Decorated room, 4086
     

Raymond Isidore, France, Maison Picassiette, 4046 and Erich Bödeker, Germany, Sculpture garden, 3922, have left the top twenty.

Considering the countries that appear in the top twenty, we see that mainly those from Western Europe are represented (England UK, France, Spain, Germany. Belgium and Italy).

As in the overview November 2021-November 2022 Ukraine is represented again with Polina Rayko's decorated house.

The difference between Western and Eastern Europe in terms of visits to sites partly has to do with the fact that I only after a number of years started to systematically focus on Eastern Europe, but it is also related to the lesser awareness of the phenomenon of art environments in those countries.

So to get an impression of what's going on in these areas, here is is an overview of the most visited sites in Eastern Europe and Russia:

Russia 

These are the most visited sites in Russia (>1500 views) 

      1. Alexander Emelyanov, Decorated garden, 2889

      2. Sergey Kirillov, Decorated house, 2296

      3. Alexander Ladogina, Church, 2151

      4. Lyudmila Kneller, Mosaic decorations, 2031

      5. Yuri Antonov, Museum the Temple of Homer, 2023

      6. Yevgeny Malakhin (artist name Bukashkin), Paint the garbage, 1914

      7. Alexander Alekseeva, The old park in Kabardinka, 1785

      8. Petr Zhurilenko, Sculpture garden, 1769

      9. Ivan Pisarenko, Replicas of Kremlin classics, 1571

    10. Egor Utrobin, Sculpture garden, 1567

   

The ranking is almost the same as a year ago, except that Yuri Antonov is a newcomer. The article about his indoor art environment was published in June 2022 and already reached a high position this past year.

East European countries

And here are data about the East-European countries Czechia, Slovakia, Hungary, Poland and Ukraine (number of visitors >1500)

Czech Republic

     1. František Rint, Ossuary, 3322

     2. Vàclav Levý, Rock sculptures, 2985

     3. Anežka Kašpárková and Marie Jagošová, Decorated chapel, 2239

     4. Vojtech Kopic, Sculpted rocks, 1801

     5. Frantiska Blechová, Fairytale garden, 1577

Frantiska Blechová has joined the overview of most visited sites in Ukraine

 Slovakia

     1. Decorated village of Čičmany, 1884

     2. Martin Sabaka, Replicas of famous buildings, 1704

The overview of Slovakia (with five art environments in the weblog) is unchanged

Hungary

     1. János Csere, Bugaszeg estate, 1778

     2. Zoltán Alekszi, Replicas of Hungarian castles. 1712

     3. István Taródi, Tarodi Castle, 1500

This is the first time that visits to sites in Hungary have been included in this overview. All three sites listed are dedicated to singular architecture.

Poland

    1. Bogdan Ziętek, Interior with sculptures, 2734

    2. Felicja Curylowa, Decorated house, (Zalipie), 2131

    3. Boguslawa Iwanowskiego, Sculpture garden, 1882

    4. Krystyna and Eugeniusz Msciwojewscy, Garden with wooden sculptures, 1570

    5. Henryk Sawko, Stone park, 1561

    6. Danuta Szudzińska, House with frescoes, 1503

The number of art environments in Poland with more than 1,500 visitors has been expanded with the fresco-decorated house of Danuta Szudzińska, who passed away in 2021.

Ukraine

    1. Polina Rayko, Decorated house, 5708

    2. Nicholas Golovan, Decorated house, 2330

    3. Stanislav Sartsevich, Sculpture garden, 2248

    4. Vladimir Chaika, Decorated stairwell, 1740

The overview of Ukraine has not changed compared to last year, but the number of visitors to the article about Polina Rayko's site has increased so much that it is already listed in the overview of most visited sites.

So much for looking back at what happened in 2022/23 in this weblog in terms of most visited sites out of the 600+ reviews it includes. 

This quantitative perspective is just one of the ways to approach the creations discussed in this weblog. Perhaps a different, more substantive approach can be developed in the future. For the time being, there are still discoveries of creations that are worth a description in the framework as developed in this weblog.

 

Fedor Alexandrovich Zhiltsov, Пугала в саду / Scarecrows in the garden

 photos (around 1980) by A.S. Milovsky

The creation in the image above is one of more than thirty scarecrows that in the 1970s/80s decorated a garden located in Vertlovo, a small village in the Yaroslavl region of Russia, about 250 km northeast of Moscow.

Life and works

This rather special art environment was created by Fedor Alexandrovich Zhiltsov (1900-1984), who was born into a peasant family in the village of Chukholza, near Vertlovo. 

The photo below shows him in old age, sitting next to one of his creations, and looking at another.

As a young boy Zhiltsov loved to draw pictures and he also enjoyed cutting out all kinds of figures from paper, a skill he had learned from his mother. There was also a resident in the village who had a hand-painted scarecrow in front of his house, an example that inspired Zhiltsov when he later started doing this himself.

When he was eleven years old, he worked for eight years as a laborer on a farm outside his hometown and after this job he had to serve in the Tsar's army, fighting in the wars of that time.

After his time in the army, Zhiltsov developed himself as a veterinarian, mainly caring for horses. He married when he was 29, the couple settled in Vertlovo and they got three sons and a daughter. 

Retired in 1960, Zhiltsov began making scarecrows, at first to scare birds away from his garden, but later mainly because of the satisfaction he got from making such creations. He made them freehand, without using any pattern or drawing, working elongated poles of ash wood with an axe, a saw and a knife as his only tools.

The scarecrows got a human appearance by providing them with a headgear, a face, red lips and the suggestion of an upper and lower body. His scarecrows had movable arms, one pointing upwards, the other downwards. Connected to an axis the arms could rotate, rising en felling alternately.

The images in this post mainly show isolated creations, but in the art environment as a whole there were also some ensembles to be seen, often military-like groups led by a commander. One of Zhiltsov's sons was also depicted as a young soldier, together with his young wife in a blue dress, both waving to each other.

Residents of the village of Vertlovo, which today has few inhabitants, brought Zhiltsov items to dress up his creations, such as buttons, belts, medals, swords and pots that could serve as caps. They also asked him to make a scarecrow for their own garden, which he did.

Zhiltsov's art environment got little publicity

In the early 1980s, Zhiltsov was interviewed by Alexander Sergejewitsj Milovsky, who prepared a book on Russian folk art, which was published in 1982 entitled Скачи, добрый единорог (Ride, Good Unicorn).

This probably is the only publication with a good description of the art environment and its creator. I would like to acknowledge that the text of this post is based upon the information in the article in Milovsky's book.

But then, in 2004, an article was published in a Yaroslav's newspaper, informing its readers about the creation of a museum dedicated to scarecrows. The article briefly mentions Fedor Zhiltsov and his art environment. It is reported that Zhiltsovs died in 1984 and that his house became neglected and empty, with a collapsed roof and a completely overgrown garden. It is also was stated that several scarecrows manufactured by Zhiltsov, came into the possession of relatives and neighbors.

Milovsky's book

A wooden sculpture of a man with rotating arms like Zhiltsov made, can also be found in the art environment made in the 1990s by Anatoly Varlamov. On the roof of his house stood a sculpture of astronaut Yuri Gagarin with arms rotating along his body. This site has also gradually disappeared.

Documentation
* Alexander Sergejewitsj Milovsky, Скачи, добрый единорог (Ride, Good Unicorn), PDF-edition, 1982, -196 p

* Article (September 2004) on the website of a newspaper published in the Yaroslavl region

Fedor Alexandrovich Zhiltsov

Scarecrows

Vertlovo, Yaroslavl region, Russia

this site doesn't exist anymore

Georgy Bonza, Оформленный снаружи и внутри / Decorated exterior and interior

this image and the next two from website Moi Mir

The image above shows an art environment in Chisinau, the capital of Moldova, a country located in Eastern Europe between Romania and Ukraine. Moldova was part of the USSR for many years, but became an independent republic in 1991.

Life and works

This now disappeared art environment, comprising a front garden and an interior full of decorative creations, was created by Georgy Bonza, about whom virtually no biographical information can be found on the internet. 

It is not clear in what year he was born or whether he got any specific education. However, it is known that he entered into a marriage, but that his wife left him, partly because he often spent whole nights making all kinds of creations.

It is also known that Georgy Bonza died in the late 1980s.

In the image above Bonza is seated on the steps to the door of his house, surrounded by columns decorated with streamers, and with a pair of large human sculptures on his right. He looks like a grown man, perhaps about fifty years old.

At the top right of the image one can see the number 47, a referral to the number of Bonza's house in a street that then was named.Irkutskaya Street.

The image below gives a better view of the part of the outer wall to the right of the entrance. The streamers continue and there are numerous small-scale decorations such as a fruit basket and all kinds of people's heads

Fencing and front garden

The fence that separates the front garden from the street is well worth a closer look. It was decorated by a long line of sculptures of boys and girls holding hands. This is a design that, to my knowledge, is completely unique in the European field of art environments.

The first photo of this post and the one below show this specific aspect of this art environment.  

The image above also gives to some extent an impression of the creations that adorned the front garden. So at the right end of the fence there was a large figure blowing a musical instrument in the shape of a long pipe, a kind of bagpiper, but in a different cultural context.

The space between the fence and the house included many more characters, such as the busts of Russian political leaders Lenin, Stalin and Khrushchev, and the astronaut Yuri Sagarin.

And then there were many more characters, such as the little boy wielding a fishing rod (?) below.

this image and the next two
from website Moi Mir

There was also a fountain with all kinds of figures, there were representations of various  animals, such as birds and a snake that was planning to explore the roof.

To complete the impression of this part of the site, two more images below, on the left the mailbox in the shape of a large frog and on the right a rabbit, carrying a heavy load.

The interior of the house

The interior of the house, like the front garden, was richly provided with all kinds of decorations, such as masks, paintings and high reliefs on the walls and many sculptures, including one of Leonid Brezhnev, who led the Soviet Union after Khrushchev.

this image and the next one from website locals.md

Attention was also paid to local celebrities, as reflected in the image below of Chisinau-based famous wrestler Ivan Zaikin (1880-1948).

A special item in the interior was a coffin on a table in the middle of the room where rested a realistically depicted old lady with a headscarf, his passed away mother, as Bonza explained.

House with chimeras

Residents of Chisinau have referred to Bonza's art environment as a Дом с химерами (House of Chimeras). This is also the designation used in the Old Chisinau website (see documentation) that offers them a discussion platform.

Applied to the art environment, and by extension to Bonza as the creator, this equivocation could mean that there are at least two qualities associated with the creation, a beautiful side, such as a series of wonderful sculptures, and a somewhat scary side, as might be in particular reflected in the exhibited coffin.

Documentation

* Article (September 2017) on website Moi Mir

* Discussion on the Old Chisinau website

* Article on the local website Locals.md

Gregory Bonza

Decorated exterior and interior

Irkutskaya street, 47 (nowadays V. Kupcha street)

Chisinau, Moldova

this art environment doesn't exist anymore