Viktor Kazakovtsev, Вятская модница/Vyatka fashionista

screenprint from the first video in the documentation

One can encounter him in the center of Kirov, a city of some 473.000 inhabitants in Russia, located at some 1000 km north-west of Moscow. Almost every morning Victor Sergejevitsj Kazakovtsev, locally known as Vyatka fashionista ¹, sets out in one of his many special outfits to take a walk in the center of the city.

Life and work

Kazakovtsev was born in 1946 in the community of Arbazh in the Kirov region. Already in his younger years he demonstrated musicality. He had a nice voice, could sing well and liked to play the accordion. 

He attended a music school, after which he got a job in the regional cultural center of the village of Tuja as an assistant for amateur performances, such as accompanying the choir and a dance ensemble.

In that job he also helped with choosing and designing costumes for performances.

the two pictures above and next five from VKontakte 

(published there without mention of the photographer)

Kazakovtsev then became director of the Palace of Culture in the city of Kirov.

In the late 1980s his health did not go well. Already from the age of 14 he suffered from epileptic seizures, but now his symptoms were such that he had to be admitted to a neuro-psychiatric clinic.

Due to these health problems, Kazakovtsev was eventually declared unfit for work.

Now a single, divorced from his wife, two adult sons living elsewhere, he had to live on a benefit from the state because of his disability. 

From childhood on, also because of his mother's influence, he liked to wear nice clothes and now living alone, without a job but with a lot of time, he began to shape his appreciation for nice clothes into a passion for special clothing.

Kazakovtsev went visiting second-hand stores where he could buy costumes and other fashion items for a small price, which he thereafter on his old-fashioned hand-driven sewing machine converted into a suit to his taste.

All his creations came from his rich imagination and when making uniform-like clothing (as in above picture), he was careful not to imitate army and comparable official uniforms, so as not to come into conflict with authorities.

In the first years of his special hobby, he also did not want his activities to become known to others, but when perestroika began in 1993, that attitude changed and from then on he dared to go public with his hobby.

Kazakovtsev started wearing his creations in public and gradually -certainly in the last decade- he became a well-known public person in Kirov, got attention from the press, was presented in videos on You Tube and was asked to appear on regional and national television.

The videos show he likes to do acts, for example portraying a pipe smoking ship's captain (although he never smokes nor drinks).

In the old and small wooden house where he lives, the walls of the living room are fully covered with calendars with images of artworks made by famous artists and paintings by Kazakovtsev himself. 

And then: clothing is everywhere, not just in a couple of cupboards, but also hanging on nails in the wall, lying on chairs and on his bed......

All items of his extensive collection of over a hundred garments are put together as in a storage, without any form of presentation in an arrangement.

So, exhibiting his fashionable creations does not happen in the sheltered surroundings of Kazakovtsev 's house, but in the much larger environment of public space, when he makes his walk in the city center. Kind of a scattered art environment.

Or, as has been noted in other words: Kazakovtsev was removed from the stage when he had to quit his job as a director of the Palace of Culture, but then he made the entire city a stage, where he now has more spectators than in the Palace..

Documentation

* Article (November 2018) by Evgina Volunkova on website Taki Dela

* Article (October 2018) on website Kirov Online (video included)
* Article (December 2019) on website Mk-Kirov

Videos

* Video (April 2019, 5'16", YouTube ) on Телеканал 360 

* Video (May 2013, 2'19", YouTube) on Vyatka TV (act as a ship's captain)

* And another video, also on Vyatka TV (September 2013, 2'12", You Tube) with an act as a railwayman

note
¹ Vyatka was the name of the city of Kirov until 1934

Victor Sergejevitsj Kazakovtsev
Vyatka fashionista
Kirov, Kirov region, Russia

live performances in city center

Robrecht Leenders, Theater Bofland/Theater Lucky Land

the decorated front side of Robrecht Leenders' "Theater Bofland"

picture from the Bofland website

The picture above shows the decorated front of an ordinary house in an ordinary street in Hasselt, a town of some 78000 inhabitants in the north-east of Belgium. 

The owner of the house has transformed the ground floor of the property into a theater/museum, named Bofland in Flemish, which in English means Lucky Land. The back yard of the property includes a variety of sculptures and other creations. All together a colorful art environment 

Robrecht Leenders in front of the site

this picture (August 2017) courtesy of ©️ Els Schepers

Life and works

The one who created this art environment/theatre/museum is Robrecht Leenders, who was born in 1948 in Heusden, some 17 km north of Hasselt, where his father had a music store. Leenders himself later said that he grew up in a loving family.

The internet has no information on how Leenders was doing once he was an adult. In view of the activities he has undertaken since the late 1980s, it is not impossible that before that time he was part of alternative groups or experimental artistic circles. 

How this may be, after a number of wanderings, in 1985 Leenders ended up in Hasselt, the city where he would live for the rest of his life and also the city that would get to know and appreciate him as a theater artist and a song singer traversing the city with his bike and guitar.

the inscription says "Welcome in Bofland" 

this picture and the next one from the Bofland website

Creating a theater

Once feeling at home in Hasselt,  Leenders step by step began to transform the ground floor of his house into an interactive educational theater. There is a small entrance hall where visitors are welcomed, there is a small stage against the front wall bordering the street,  and there is seating in the form of groups of tables and chairs.

The interior has been richly furnished with all kinds of decorations, fairy-tale scenes, viewing boxes and miniature arrangements, but, above all, every part of the red painted wall and ceiling tells a story by means of colorful posters on the walls and the specific creations arranged around.

The Bofland Theater (Lucky Land Theater) began its public activities in the early 1990s. 

a view of the interior

The theatre has a special theme. It relates how people treat the earth badly and how aliens from the Bof Planet come to save her by bringing love and take with them the Belts, who are the bad guys.

Bofland theatre was regularly visited by groups of children, for example to celebrate a birthday or as part of a school project. Leenders with his young spirit and great imagination, would entertain them by telling stories and singing songs, accompanying himself on the guitar.

The decorated garden is part of the project

view of the garden

this picture and the next two (August 2017) courtesy of ©️ Els Schepers

The accompanying pictures show some tall trees, which is due to the fact that the back garden of the house borders on a piece of forest that has survived for many years amidst the surrounding urban buildings.

This abundance of greenery enhances the already remarkable allure of the back garden, with its variation of specific creations with which Leenders enriched the space.

There are metal structures that look like spaceships, which of course refer to the inhabitants of the Bof planet who in Leenders' theater project visited the earth, On the terrace of the garden there are some blue colored high poles carrying blue colored bird nests filed with yellow and white colored young ones.

There are also some sculpted items, such as the small grotto in blue, as can be seen in detail in below picture..

The theater now is a museum

Because he was getting older and with less stamina, Leenders decided in 2017 to end the theater performances. The site as such, however,  continues to exist, now as a Museum. 

The city of Hasselt has recognized the specific value of this art environment and has bought the house, this to Leenders' reassurance with respect to the future of his creation.

Exposition

At the beginning of 2014, the internationally working photographer Jos Aerts, who lived in Hasselt, got Leenders' cooperation for a photo project about him and his art environment, which led to the exhibition Gen-erations in the local museum Stadsmus  (15/10 - 8/11)

Documentation

* Website of Theater Bofland
* Article (2019) by Machteld Bosmans on local website I love Hasselt
* Article (2015) in local newspaper about Jos Aerts' photo exhibition

Video

* Video (2'44") about Leenders and Bof Land by Pieter Bas (trailer of a documentary film) on YouTube (January 2010)

* The documentary film is also on YouTube, in 5 parts. Here are the links part 1 (16'16") - 

part 2 (16'16") - part 3 (15'17") - part 4 (8'39") - part 5 (17'23")

Robrecht Leenders

Theater Bofland
Kempische Steenweg 52,
3500 Hasselt, Belgium
exterior decorations can be seen from the street
visits only on appointment
streetview

Miguel Torres Ortega, Hostal Restaurante Las Conchas

front view of the hotel-restaurant "Las Conchas"

from their website

It could be assumed that houses decorated with shells are located close to the sea, and indeed that is often the case¹. But there are exceptions² . Some of such creations are located remote from the sea, such as above pictured hotel-restaurant Las Conchas (the shells), which is located in the community of Azuaga, Spain, some 240 km remote from the nearest beach.

Life and works

The internet has virtually no biographical information about Miguel Torres Ortega (? - around 1986), who decorated exterior and interior of his hotel-restaurant with loads of shells. 

It is not clear when and where he was born. In fact, it is only known that he became the owner of the hotel in 1965 and in 1967 decided to decorate the building inside and outside with shells.

decorations in the interior 

picture (2013) by Lu de Di on website Foursquare

In her short contribution to the book Escultecturas margivagantes (2006), compiled by Antonio Ramirez, Maria del Mar Lozano Bartolozzi reports that in 1967 a party of people consumed a meal with many shellfish in the restaurant and that Miguel Torres then thought it was better not to throw away remaining shells, but to use these to decorate the property.

So he began a project that would keep him active until the early 1980's.

an old postcard with the shell decorated restaurant room 

The meals of the guests of the hotel and the visitors of the restaurant did not nearly produce enough shells to decorate the many pillars and pieces of wall, inside and outside. 

So there had to be collected by the sea. And thus it became customary to travel during the weekends -after closing time of the restaurant around midnight- to the city of Huelva with its kilometers of sandy beaches to collect shells there, a trip back and forth of about 480 km.

In making these trips, Torres was often accompanied by family members and friends.

The decorations in the interior are mainly present in the large restaurant room, which in addition to the buffet has many pillars.

the name of the site on a wall

picture (2012) from weblog Rutas Culturales

On the outside, the building, situated on the corner of two streets, has a fairly large wall surface that is completely covered with shells.

Both inside and outside the shells are basically arranged in a calm single-color pattern, supplemented with the name of the site (Las Conchas), repeating geometric arrangements (such as circles) or some  representations that have to do with the sea (such as fishes or ships).

one of the ships on the decorations of the exterior wall

(screenprint from streetview)

Torres died around 1986. 

His son Manuel took over the operation of hotel and restaurant and the care of the maintenance of the decorations

decorations around the entrance

picture (2013) by Rayko Lorenzo on website Foursquare

Documentation

* Maria del Mar Lozano Bartolozzi, "Epidermis marinera ornamental Casa de Azuaga (Badajoz)", in: Juan Antonio Ramirez, red, Escultecturas margivagantes: la arquitectura fantástica en España,  Madrid (Siruela), 2006. -p 331

* Website about Extremadura with a page about hotels in Azuaga with a description of Las Conchas and the story about the trips to the beach to collect shells.

notes

¹ such as Alfred Pedersen from Denmark, François Bothorel from France and Kevin Ffrench from France

² such as Angelo Cerpelloni from Italy and Herbert Reigner from Austria

Miguel Torres Ortega

Hostal Restaurant Las Conchas

Avenida de Extremadura 31

(on the corner of Avenida Estación)

06920 Azuaga, dept Badajoz, region Extremadura, Spain

exterior can be seen from the street

streetview

Józef Lizoń, Skansen monumentalnej rzeźby/Open Air Museum of Monumental Sculpture

Lizoń's house decorated with wooden sculptures

pictures of the site: screenprints from the video in the documentation

In Rogi, a small rural village located in the south of Poland not far from the border with Slovakia, there is a house referred to as Skansen monumentalnej rzeźby (Open-air Museum of Monumental Sculpture). Not only the house is decorated with sculptures -on the outside and the inside-, the large area around the house is also full of such sculptures.

Welcome to Józef Lizoń's art environment !

a decorated wall of the house

Life and works

Born in Rogi in 1949, Józef Lizoń after his primary education took a training to become a  carpenter in nearby Stary Sąc, but in the process he judged making windows and doors too simple and monotonous. 

So he decided to focus on wood carving, a decision undoubtedly influenced by the feeling he got after a visit to he parish church of nearby Podegrodzie, where he for the first time in his life saw sculptures in reality. 

He thought these sculptures were beautiful and felt inspired to make such creations himself. 

In 1967 -when he was in his 18th year- Lizoń's career as folk artist began. 

Lizoń  prefers to sculpt in lime, oak and birch, less often in stone, and thematically his religious representations take an important place (the Christ -as in he picture above, situated in a living room inside the house-, crosses, saints, angels, devils).

In addition he has also made many creations that depict people and scenes from life in the Polish countryside (as in the picture below a craftsman with a millstone). 

When in 2017 his 50-year artistic career was celebrated with an exposition, Lizoń could look back on a career as a folk artist in which he had made around a thousand (mainly wooden) sculptures

Initially, Lizon had to become known. He first worked for an intermediary and made small wooden plates and statuettes, which were sold in souvenir shops.

But then he met someone who provided a permanent sale of his work, in particular realistic sculptures of eagles with spread wings and a crown on their heads, which were purchased by Poles living in America as a souvenir from their home country.

As a folk art artist with a religious approach, he also got commissions. For example, in the course of the years he has manufactured some ten altars for churches in Poland and over a hundred wooden crosses, often some meters high.

In this way Lizoń and his artistic work gradually became known.

Creating an art environment

The creation of an art environment started at the end of the 1970s. The actual beginning was when Lizoń placed a large sculpture in front of his house of Polish Cardinal Wojtyla, who was elected Pope (John Paul II) in October 1978.

He then began to add more and more sculpture to the walls of the house and of other buildings on the site, and as the pictures above show, the walls are completely filled with his creations. Incidentally, the same also applies to the rooms indoors.

And then, the area around the house, 1000 m2 in size, gradually became filled with sculptures placed in rows, often covered with a red roof consisting of two roof shields. Such a way of presenting sculptures is taken from a specific model among the wayside shrines (przydrożne kapliczki), a well known phenomenon in Poland.

In the 1970s Lizon had already traveled around Poland and had seen open air exhibitions of sculptures elsewhere. In this way he got the idea to make an outdoor exhibition himself. 

He described the arrangement of his sculptures between apple and plum trees in the orchard as an open-air museum of monumental sculpture.

For the inhabitants of Rogi, such a use of the space around a house was something entirely new, just as it had happened that the village now housed a museum.

 

The quartet of images above gives only a limited picture of Lizon's creations in the area around the house. 

In addition to a large sculpture of the Christ present in the area and sculptures with a religious character, the other creations often refer to values such as family, motherhood and attachment to Poland. But there are also creations through which he shares his own opinion, like there is a sculpture entitled Babska Wladza (Girls Power).

Jubilee 50 years of artist in 2017

On the occasion of Lizoń's 50-year artistry, the exhibition Józef Lizoń. Sculptor from the village of Rogi was held in 2017 (28/4 - 17/9) in the Nikifor Museum in Krynica

An album about Lizoń was published in 2018

In September 2018 an album entitled Józef Lizoń, Rzeźba (Józef Lizoń, Sculpture). It was presented for the first time during a meeting at the Cultural Centre in Podegrodzie.

Documentation
* Article (April 2015) in regional journal Gazeta Krakowska, with a series of pictures
* Website Polska Niezwykla with an article about and a series of pictures of the site
* Article (April 2017) on website Dobry tygodnik sądecki (A good weekly from Sądecki) at the occasion of the exposition in the Nikifor Museum

* Article (April 2017) on the website of the Muzeum Okręgowe in Nowy Sacz, also in relation with the exposition

Video

* Video about Lizon by regional TV MTV 24 (July 2017, YouTube, 11'13")

Józef  Lizoń

Open-air museum of monumental sculpture

Rogi 57, municipality of Podegrodzie, district of Nowosądecki, Poland 

can be visited 

Marcel Marionneau, Facade with texts and decorations

this picture and the next one (probably around 2010) 
by Jean-Pierre Faurie as on the weblog of Sophie Lepetit 

Regional newspaper Ouest-France has reported that Marcel Marionneau from the community of Le Bourg-sous-la-Roche in the Vendée department, who was known locally as the author of the texts and decorations on the facade of his house, died early November 2019.

Life and works.

Marionneau, who was born in 1943, in his youth was attracted to making art, in particular sculpture, and when he was in his mid-twenties he took lessons with artists in Paris and Angers .

In May 1968 he returned to his native region and settled in Le Bourg-sous-la-Roche, part of the municipality of La Roche-sur-Yon in the French department Vendée, a place where he would spend his entire life.

His house on the rue Emile Bauman has undergone various changes during the fifty years that Marionneau has lived there, both on the inside, where Marionneau installed his workshop and situated his sculptures, paintings and books, and on the outside, where he added decorations and texts to the exterior walls, which changed over time and eventually almost disappeared.

An article in the regional journal Ouest France of May 2019, written by Patrick Guyomard, who met Marionneau at home, tells that at that time the interior wasn't only filled with sculptures and canvasses with paintings, but also with books, documents and archives. which testified to the search that the artist undertook for what he referred to as "the intellectual synthesis of human knowledge".

One of the themes Marionneau reflected on was the volume courbe (curved volume) ¹, which has to do with the perfect beauty. Just as the circle and the square and their spatial equivalents the cube and the sphere can be seen as ideal shapes, one can reflect on and theorize about the shape of the ideal curve and in particular how this would manifest itself spatially as a volume.

Marionneau has devoted himself a lot to this theme in theory, but also in his practice as a sculptor.

The wall decorations

Regarding the decorations on the facade, it is not known in which year Marionneau started this project, but its quite possible that he already began in the 1970s.

The artist did, however, indicate something about his initial intentions. They had to do with a card game known in the Vendee called Le jeu de l’Aluette. It has been played for centuries in groups of four people, two against two, with a set of cards that includes all kinds of images and symbols.

By making frescoes on the outside wall in such a familiar pattern, Marionneau wanted to communicate with the other residents.

Around 1990 the entire facade was decorated with a beautiful set of frescoes.

However, when a television crew would visit the site to make recordings for a broadcast about the now well-known art environment, Marionneau panicked and replaced part of the frescoes with texts.

The two pictures above show both the part with the frescoes and the part with the texts.

Around 2005 a new moment came in the development of the art environment.

Marionneau then decided to focus his attention on painting and sculpting. This also included that he abstained from further development or maintenance of  the decorations on the facade and the side walls. In the course of the following years this would lead to their gradua decay.

streetview June 2018

The pictures above show that in June 2018 the left side wall still included the (meanwhile affected) texts.

The left part of the facade still had a number of (faded) frescoes, but the right part of the facade and the side wall at the right had been washed with a gray paint.

Marionneau in the artworld

On the internet virtually no information is available about Marionneau's position in the art world. An entry on the Art Insolite website suggests that his artistic work isn't part of French mainstream art, but belongs to what is referred to in France as art singulier (singular art),

This indication is also used in an announcement of an exhibition of his drawings and sculptures in June 2018 in Galerie Monier in La Roche-sur-Yonne.

Documentation
* There was a website by or about Marionneau, but this one isn't available anymore
* Article (November 2019) in regional journal Ouest-France announcing Marionneau's death
* An earlier article (May 2019) by Patrick Guyomard, also in Ouest-France with a report about a visit to Marionneau's house and workshop

*Some pictures on website Art Insolite, with a text by Jean-Pierre Faurie, republished on the weblog of Sophie Lepetit (October 2010 and September 2017)

note
¹ Volume Courbe is also the name of a London-based band around singer/songwriter Charlotte Marionneau, who comes from France and is referred to as a friend of Charles Marionneau

Marcel Marionneau
36 rue Emile Bauman
85191 Le Bourg-sous-la-Roche, dept Vendée, region Pays-de-la-Loire

what currently (2019) remains of the 
wall decorations can be seen from the street
streetview

Valery Gavrilov, Освобождение человека/Liberation of Man

Herodotus, father of history

pictures from photo-website Instazu

One of the more than twenty parks in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg, the Foresters Park (Лесники Парк) in the south-eastern part of the city, includes an ensemble of trees transformed into sculptures. 

This artistic project, started in the late 1970s, came about through the cooperation of two employees from a forestry institute and an artist named Valery Gavrilov, whose creations contributed significantly to the specific character of this ensemble of sculptures.

Northwind

Life and works of Valery Gavrilov

Gavrilov was born on September 10, 1948 and at a young age it already was clear that he had great artistic skills, so he went to an art school in Yekaterinburg and became a drawing teacher at a school.

He did not join the official Union of Artists, so in the 1970s his artistic activities took place in the non-official artworld of Yekaterinburg

It has been said about him that he wavered on the thin line between genius and madness and that he had an enormous inner strength. In his relatively short life Gavrilov produced thousands of paintings, tens of thousands of graphic sheets, hundreds of photos and numerous wooden sculptures. His house, considered suitable for demolition, was a place for discussion and festivities for many from the non-official art world.

This non-official underground group of artists in Yekaterinburg in the 1960s and 1970s was searching for new forms in art. In those years, Russia still had the Soviet regime, and these artists did not have the opportunity to raise their views in public (art) magazines or to show their work at official exhibitions.

Only in the years of perestroika would underground art become public. In Yekaterinburg in 1987 the first uncensored art exhibition, Surikova 31, was held and in the 1990s a new turn would take place with the group of artists around Bukashkin, the self-taught artist who proclaimed Paint the garbage.

Gavrilov tragically died because of a choke in 1982, just a day after he turned 34.

Sjamaan

Creating an ensemble of wooden sculptures

In the context of an art world ruled by the government it is quite special that in 1976 Valentin Chernov and Gennady Povod, employees associated with the Forestry Institute, together with Gavrilov, unhindered by censorship or other government involvement, were able to start an art project in the Forestry Park. Povod was the head of the wood processing department and Cherov was deputy dean of the faculty of mechanical wood processing ¹.

But so it happened. The three started the project, this with the agreement of the director of the Institute, and also with the cooperation of the local authorities, who welcomed and facilitated the addition of the sculptures to the public space the park is (such as other sculptures by Gavrilov would embellish other places in the public space, such as school yards and children's playgrounds).

Valentin Chernov was the leading person in terms of developing the overall theme for the set of sculptures. Following his passion for the history of the Urals, the sculptures would especially tell about the ancient peoples who inhabited the territory of this area, such as the Issedon and the Arimasp.

Chemov would also make sketches which Gavrilov used to make his sculptures.

Love

Liberation of Man

The art environment initially included 18 sculptures, one of which -The fear of dispense- has since disappeared ¹

It has been said that currently the ensemble is somewhat in decay, and indeed some sculptures are overgrown, but considering that they were placed some forty years ago and that the collection is not an official monument and therefore enjoys no protection from local authorities, it seems rather special that nowadays so much of the creation is left.

Starting with a sculpture of Herodotus, the Greek historian living 500 years before Christ, the sculptures show the development of humanity as expressed in myths and legends, with struggles between ancient peoples (the fabulous Issedon and Arimasp), images of former gods, but also of a young woman protected by a man.

In 2019 Stanislav and Irina Shminke, artists from Yekaterinburg, re-installed signs with explanatory texts at the bottom of the sculptures, so that they now each have a name and description. Irina also contributed an article about Gavrilov's wooden sculptures to the Uralnash website that includes articles and documentation on interesting and unexpected issues in Yekaterinburg (see documentation).

Documentation

* Irina Shminke, Wooden idols of Yekaterinburg, article (October 2019) on website Uralnash (a richly illustrated text about Gavrilov's sculptures in the Forestry Park and on other places in 

Yekaterinburg). Anna Sitnikova provided a translation of this article into English

* Maria Bogacheva, Idols of the Siberian tract, article (March 2015) on website Uraloved (illustrated text about Gavrilov and the sculptures  in the park)

* Website Museum of the Tree, with an undated series of photos of the sculptures

* A series of photos on the website photo-history.livejournal  of some of the sculptures, taken rather soon after the were installed

Video

*  Video by Uralnash (2'05", July 2016, YouTube)

notes
¹ I am indebted to Stanislav Shminke for this information

Valery Gavrilov 

Ensemble of wooden sculptures Liberation of Man 

Foresters Park

Yekaterinburg, Sverdlovsk region, Russia

can be visited freely

Eleventh anniversary of this blog

Bonjour aux promeneurs, Hello walkers
picture of a sculpture by Fernand Châtelain
courtesy of Marcello 13 (Flickr)

Today, November 11, 2019, this blog exists for eleven years and it now includes descriptions of more than 460 art environments in Europe. As in previous years I will relate here some data (as of november 9 and 10) about numbers/origin of visitors and about most viewed art environments.

Number of visitors

On november 10, 2019 the all time number of visitors was 819.622. On november 10, 2018 it was 755.533, so there is an increase of 64.089 visitors, or on the average 175 visitors a day. Over the period 2017-2018 the average was 160 visitors a day.

All time page views by country

As in previous years here is the all time rank of top ten countries as regards page-views (as on November 10):

   1. United States 276448  (rank 2018 idem)

   2. Netherlands  81293 (rank 2018 idem)
   3. France 72837 (rank 2018 idem)

   4. Germany 57481 (rank 2018 idem)

   5. United Kingdom  52538 (rank 2018 idem)

   6. Russia 28851 (rank 2018 idem)

   7. Italy 26410 (rank 2018 was 8)

   8. Ukraine 22812 (rank 2017 was 7)

   9. Spain 15072 (rank 2017 idem)

 10. Poland  6237 (rank 2017 idem)

The top ten list includes the same countries as in 2018, almost in the same order, except Italy and Ukraine which changed place. Italy is on the rise: 9 in 2017, 8 in 2018, 7 in 2019 

Once more the interest from Ukraine and Poland in Eastern Europe and Russia is lasting.

Most viewed sites all time

These are the sites with the most all time views (as on november 9):

  1.  Bill and Elisabeth Charge, UK Shell garden, 6297
  2.  Robert Garcet, Belgium Tour Eben-Ezer, 5453
  3.  Jose Maria Garrido, Spain Shell decorated interior, 4902
  4.  Joseph Ferdinand Cheval, France Palais Idéal, 4748
  5.  Robert Tatin, France Singular architecture, 4532
  6.  Bodan Litnianski, France, Decorated garden, 4254
  7.  Abbé Fouré, France Sculpted rocks, 3614
  8.  Chomo, France Préludian art, 3983
  9.  Francisco Grajera, Spain Decorated house, 3683
10.  Joseph Pujiula i Vila, Spain Labyrinth, 3576

The first place for Bill and Elisabeth Charge has to do with a one time event. End October 2016 the husband of a granddaughter of Bill and Elisabeth posted a message on the Watford Memories and History page on Facebook, asking -with a link to the relevant post in this blog- if anyone remembered the sculpture garden, that was demolished by the housing company soon after Elisabeth had died.

Thousands of people did remember the site and this resulted in over 5000 hits of the post in a few days time, which meanwhile has grown to over 6200. a number that no other site has been able to surpass until now.

For the rest, the top ten list continues to contain the same names as those of previous years, compared to 2018 also in the same order. So the list of top ten sites viewed includes the same set of names as in previous years, Robert Garcet from Belgium. Facteur Cheval, Robert Tatin, Bodan Litnianski,Abbé Fouré and Chomo from France and José  Maria Garrido, Francisco Grajera and Joseph Pujiula from Spain.

On 11 and 12 the same artists as in 2018 appear: Erich Bödeker (Sculpture garden, 3505) and Karl Junker (Decorated interior, 3545), both from Germany. now followed on 13 by Willem van Genk (Arnhem bus station, 3151) from the Netherlands, by Stephen Wright (House of dreams museum, 3329) from the UK, on 14. and by José García Martin (Sculpture garden, 3252 from Spain) on 15.

Ernesto Fernando Nannetti from Italy (Graffiti di NOF4. 3231) who wasn't in the top 20 so far, is now on 16, followed on 17 by  Jean-Daniel Allanche (Decorated interior, 3153) from France. on 18 by Julius Klingebiel (Decorated hospital room, 3190) from Germany, on 19 by Raymond Isidore (Maison Picassiette, 3101) and on 20 by Robert Vasseur (Mosaic decorated house and garden, 3002), both from France.

Eastern Europe and Russia

In the autumn of 2014 I began paying special attention on tracing art environments in Eastern Europe and in Russia west of the Urals. which has resulted in sites being documented, in particular from Russia, that so far were virtually unknown in the field of art environments in Western Europe.

Here are the sites with all time views above 1500 (as on november 9):

Eastern Europe
Bogdan Ziętek, Interior with sculptures, Poland, 2385
František Rint, Sedlec Ossuary, Czech Republic, 2541
Václav Levý, Sculpted rocks, Czech Republic, 2526
Stanislav Sartsevich, Sculpture garden, Ukraine, 2130
Nicolas Golovan, Decorated house, Ukraine, 2078
Felicja Curylowa, Decorated house, Poland, 1711
Bogusława Iwanowskiego, Sculpture garden, Poland, 1675

Russia
Alexander Emelyanov, Architectures, sculptures, 2384
Alexander Ladogina, Singular architecture, 2028
Sergey Kirillov, Decorated house, 1740
Pjotr Zhurilenko, Sculpture garden, 1649
Yevgeny Malakhin (=Bukashkin), Frescoe decorated walls, 1569

Finland

And then, especially for my Finnish friends, here are the five most viewed Finnish sites:

Elis Sinistö, Villa Mehu, 2498
Ensio Tuppurainen, Paradise, 2296
Veijo Rönkkönen, Patapuisto sculpture garden, 2068
Keijo Ikonen, Sculpture garden, 1441
Olavi Laiho, Sculpture garden, 1213

Of course, above listings are just meant to give an idea of the focus of the visitors who visit this blog.