Pierre Rapeau, le Bois aux Créatures / The wood with creatures

pictures courtesy of Yannick Rolandeau 

When young the forest was his habitat and then later in life he began transforming it into an art environment.

Life and works

Pierre Rapeau (1935-2007), a teacher of natural sciences in the Paris region, was born in the Périgord area of France. He had a fond memory of the walks he made with his grandmother in the local forest, collecting mushrooms and herbs, while grand mère told him fables and stories of former times, like grandmothers do.

A self-taught artist, Rapeau made paintings on canvas, but later in his life after a divorce in the 1980s he preferred to be on himself with his sorrows and "to use nature as his sketchbook".

So he got accustomed to leave in the early morning and visit the forest of his childhood, alone, decorating rocks and tree trunks with paintings, in this way providing these natural items with all kinds of expressions, eyes, faces, regards.....

Rapeau's artwork probably can be seen as a kind of land art, but one could also say he made an art environment, transforming parts of the woods he considered as his habitat, into an ensemble of artworks.

Actual situation

In 2011 some twenty-five decorated items still existed, which were cared for by a friend of Pierre Rapeau (according to the weblog Bonheur de lire, not available anymore). The internet hasn't information about the situation in later years.

Yannick Rolandeau and Pierre Rapeau 

French filmmaker Yannick Rolandeau, impressed by Rapeau's creations, wanted to make a film about the work, but Rapeau for a long time declined to co-operate, because he preferred to stay anonymous. When he finally agreed,  Rapeau died before the film could be made.
 
Documentation
* Yannick Rolandeau wrote kind of an In Memoriam for Pierre Rapeau, explaining in this text what kind of documentary he had wanted to shoot about life and works of the artist. This text, published on Rolandeau's website (not available anymore), is available in English on the website OEE texts.
* Article (undated) by Jeanine Rivais on her website
* More pictures on the website of Michel Gombart (2008) and on the website Oui....mais......(2013)

*Article (2014) on the website Outsider Art Now (based upon the article in this weblog and another weblog from that time, that doesn't exist anymore)

Exposition in 2008 

Although Pierre Rapeau did not make his creations for a human public, articles about his work have been published and in September 2008 an exposition was held in his honor (la Beaudrigie, 23800 Saint Jory de Chalais, Dordogne, France). 

first published November 2008, last revised June 2024

Pierre Rapeau
le Bois aux Créatures
24300 Abjat sur Bandiat, dept Dordogne, region Nouvelle Aquitaine, France
the actual situation of the creations is unclear

the part of the wood with the decorations in
the forest is private property, but it is open 
to the public 

Fernand Châtelain, le Jardin Humoristique / the Humorous Garden

 picture courtesy of marcello14, Flickr

Bonjour aux promeneurs, that text is stated on the nameplate of one of the many sculptures made by Fernand Châtelain ¹. I am fond of this sculpted little man who in my very first post welcomed visitors of this weblog.

Life and works

Born in Piacé in France, Fernand Châtelain (1899-1988) first had a job as a baker and then became a farmer. 

When retired in 1962, he and his wife settled in the small community of Fyé, south of Alençon, where the couple had acquired a house with a garden facing Fyé's main street.

In 1965 Châtelain began making sculptures which he displayed in the garden along the street: all types of persons, a variety of animals and constructions, such as the Pisa Tower.

All together these slightly over seventy artworks constituted a lively and jolly display, a humorous garden indeed, also because of Châtelain's funny signs he added to the exhibition.

The creations could be seen (and probably were meant to be seen) from the street, once a national, currently a departmental road. One of Châtelain's impersonations greeted the passers-by (Bonjour aux promeneurs) and he added signs telling them how far it was to either Alençon or le Mans.

picture (2007) from website Outsider Art in France

 Fernand Châtelain has been active in creating this art environment for some twenty years.

After he died in 1988, the collection was legated to the community, but for a long time the site wasn't being cared for.

site before restoration
picture (2006) from the former website "les inspirés du bord des routes"

Restoration

In 2005 however, with the support of the local government, the garden and the sculptures have been restored. This was done under the supervision of Laure Chavanne, who in 2015 published an article about this renovation (see documentation) 

Actual situation (2022)

Nowadays the garden is still in good condition. Annual maintenance is carried out by students of the art academies in Le Mans and Tours.

Documentation
* In her article (around 1997) "Qui sauvera le jardin naïf de Fernand Chatelain?" Jeanine Rivais describes the state of the site  around 1997, almost ten years after the death of Châtelain

* A series of pictures, made just before restoration, on Fred's travel site 

* Another series on the website Outsider Art in France (September 2007)

* Article (October 6, 2008) by Bruno Montpied, in his weblog, a review of the restoration

* Laure Chavanne, "Préserver la mémoire des âmes bricoleuses", in d'Étonnants jardins en Nord-Pas de Calais, Lyon (Ed. Les lieux-dits), 2015, pp 31-35. 

* Website Habitants-paysagistes (by Lille Art Museum from March 2018 on) has a series of pictures by Francis David (1982) and l'Aracine (1984-2008)
* Article (February 2019) by Jessica Strauss on her weblog Quirk

Video

* Video by Vues sur Loire (3'16", YouTube, May 2015)

note
¹ This sculpture currently is part of the collection of the Muséee-jardin de la Luna Rossa 
in Caen, Brittany, France 

first published November 2008, last revised September 2022

Fernand Châtelain

Le jardin humoristique

72610 Fyé, dept Sarthe, region Pays de la Loire, France

along the D 338, at the entrance of the village coming from Alençon
in 2022 open from June 5 until September 18 on Sundays, 14.30 -18 hrs 
streetview

René Raoult, l'Église verte / the Green Church

 

 picture from the website Art Singulier 

In it's early years known as the Église Verte (the Green Church) and currently as the Jardin de Pierre (Stone garden), this art environment, located in the interior of  Brittany, France, has a spiritual connotation.

Life and works

René Raoult (b. 1942), a man from the Breton countryside, who had all kinds of professions such as butcher, baker and healer (magnètiseur, in French), in 1968 as a self-taught artist also began creating wooden sculptures.

In the summer of 1984 something happened that would strongly influence his artistic production. A friend came by and informed him that in the woods a tree had fallen down. Raoult went to take a look and was fascinated by this fallen tree in which he saw a Christ laying on the ground.

He decided to sculpt the tree into a totem-like impersonation of the Christ and on July 14, 1984 this eight meters high sculpture was installed on a plot of land near his house along a departmental road in the community of Pléhédel in Brittany.

That night Raoult understood he had to equip this single sculpture with a surrounding protective shelter, kind of a church-like structure. So he continued making totems. altogether 19 large wooden sculptures, some 6 meters high, which he arranged in a circle, just as pillars in a cathedral.

These pillars got names, such as mother...father...moon.. sun.... Situated in between the pillars decorated granite blocks symbolized the elements.

postcard

French travel-writer Claude Arz, who is known as writing about "mysterious France", has published on his weblog an interview with Raoult (conducted around 2006). Here is a translation into English of a quote from that interview, which might be rather characteristic of Raoult's views:

"At nightfall, around a fire with twigs, a moved René Raoult explained me his desire to connect with cosmic forces. The fog was choking his words, blurring the tall silhouettes of the statues. “Every man needs to find his place, he said, a place where he will be fine, a sacred site”.  

Later, around a good bottle of cider, Rene Raoult confessed me: "I am dissatisfied with the world in which I live. It is certain that the totems, planted in the ground, represent for me the desire to ascend, to connect me to the cosmic forces”

picture (2015) from touristic website Ouest Magazine 

The site got new owners

In the early 2010s Raoult left his house in Pléhédel and moved to another part of Brittany. 

The new owners turned the property into an ecological tourist accommodation with tree houses to stay overnight. The collection of totems and stones is carefully integrated in the design of Les cabanes du jardin de pierre (The cabins of the stone garden)

Documentation
* The website of SPACES has an entry about Raoult which includes a text from 1991 by Willem Volkers about the site and an interview with the artist
* more pictures on Sophie Lepetit's weblog (2015)

first published November 2008, last revised June 2019

René Raoult
l'Eglise verte
lieu-dit St. Michel
181 route de Plouha

22290 Pléhédel, dept Côtes d'Armor, region Brittany, France

Bertus Jonkers, De Ideale Stad / The Ideal City

the "Ideale Stad " as exhibited in the dr Guislain museum

(this picture and the next two by Inky van Swelm)

In the Netherlands Bertus Jonkers (1920-2001) in general is seen as an outsider artist. His artistic legacy is managed by the Dutch outsider art foundation de Stadshof.

Life and works 

Born in the city of Utrecht, as a young man Jonkers was a house-painter. Forced to work in Germany during World War II, after the war he returned to Utrecht and -following his vocation- took lessons in art painting.

Jonkers was a very creative person, who made paintings and etches and produced poems and prose.

From 1974 to 1994, when he was in his sixties and seventies, he lived alone in a house in Utrecht, that was scheduled to be demolished (what never happened however, currently the house still exists).

Creating an installation

In this house, between 1989 and 1992, Bertus Jonkers constructed a miniature metropolis.

From sand, gypsum, glue and all kinds of small materials he made miniature buildings and other elements of a city, all together modelling an urban environment. The construction has become known as the Ideale Stad (Ideal City), but it is also known as City of Devotion

The creation grew and grew, and ultimately it occupied the floor, the walls, the ceiling, the stairs of the house and after some time it also stretched out into the garden.

In 1990 part of this art environment has been shown in an exposition of the Centraal Museum in Utrecht and in 1992 this museum bought part of the construction (surface 4.15 x 5.35 m, high 0.9 m).

In 1994 Bertus Jonkers had to move to a home for the elderly. The part of the Ideal City which was still in the house where he had lived, was added to the Stadshof Collection.

In his small apartment Jonkers continued his creative activities. From 1995-2000 he made another, more compact miniature metropolis, this one named the City.

He died in 2001.

His artistic legacy is being cared for

Jonkers artistic legacy has been donated to and currently is managed by the Dutch collection of outsider art De Stadshof. The legacy includes the City and items of the Ideal City.

The City as exposed in the Halle Saint Pierre, Paris , 
(exhibition "Sous le vent de l'art brut 2" 2014)  

picture courtesy of Sophie Lepetit

Exhibition in Paris

In 2014 Jonkers' miniature city was exposed in the Halle Saint Pierre in Paris (Sous le vent de l'art brut 2), where his work attracted a lot of  interest.

Some documentation

* Daan van Beek, website dedicated to life and works of Bertus Jonkers (in Dutch)
* website of the Dutch outsider art collection de Stadshof
* article (December 2014) on Hyperallergic website

first published November 2008, last revised  October 2015

Bertus Jonkers
Ideale Stad
Utrecht Netherlands
originally located in a house in Utrecht from where it has been removed,
part of the Ideal City added to the collection of the Centraal Museum Utrecht
his creation the City is in the Stadshof collection in the dr Guislain museum, Gent

Robert le Lagadec, Le jardin des divinités païennes / The garden of pagan divinities

picture courtesy of Art Insolite Amis

The Garden of Pagan Divinities is located in the small community of Fontenay-les-Briis, in the Ile de France area, south of Paris.

Life and works

The garden has sheet metal sculptures, created by Robert le Lagadec (1927-2002), who called himself a poête-forgeron, a poet-blacksmith.

Le Lagadec was a son of Breton parents, who had moved to the Essonne area, south of Paris, where they worked in the regional sanatorium. As a young man he participated in the the resistance against the German occupiers and after the war he joined the military and took part in the French war in Indochina.

After two years he left the army, returned to France and got a job in the sanatorium as head of the hospital's workshop, where patients could be active in creative activities like drawing and painting, but also acting.

Le Lagadec himself, although without artistic education, liked to make drawings and paintings.

In the late 1960s he turned to making sculptures. There is a story that he was inspired to do so when he was making a walk and stumbled upon a trunk and a piece of iron with a special appearance.

Anyway, he became fascinated by sculpting, in such a way, that he left his job at the sanatorium, to work half-days as gardener on a neighbouring property in order to have enough time to make sculptures.

 picture by Megafer

Le Lagadec for some thirty years has been active in welding and hammering recuperated metal, he coldly processed into large and robust creations. He gave them poetic names like Aliénation, En attendant Spartacus and Solitude du Poète (Alienation, Awaiting Spartacus, Solitude of the Poet). 

The all together twenty rather impressive, four to six meters (13 to 19.6 ft) high sculptures created by le Lagadec are displayed in the Garden of Pagan Divinities, a plot of land not far from the house where he lived.

Robert le Lagadec died December 26, 2002.

Association Megafer

After his death le Lagadec's site was cared for by his widow and his son Dominique, who founded the Association Megafer. This association occasionally organizes open days (often in the first weekend of June, when in general there is a nationwide opening of gardens in France).

Documentation
* Article (1995) by Jeanine Rivais
* Website of the Parc Naturel Régional Haute Vallée de Chevreuse with a referral to an article in l'Echo 

* Entries (April 2014) on the weblog of Sophie Lepetit with a variety of pictures of the site and the sculptures
-      april 25: overview
-      april 26: the various sculptures
* Article on SPACES website

Videos
* Trailer (on Vimeo 4;05) of Paroles de Fer, film by Mathieu Wilson (2004, 26 min, ).

* Entre Ciel et Fer, film (2011) by Rémi Duffourd (24;20 min, on Vimeo)

first published November 2008, last revised January 2019

Robert le Lagadec

Le jardin des divinités païennes
20 rue du Bon Puits

91640 Fontenay-les-Briis, dept Essonne, region Île de France, France

open only on special occasions 
or on appointment (see weblog Sophie Lepetit)

Kevin Duffy, Rectory Garden Center

this picture (late 1990s) and the next two 
courtesy of Iain Jackson

The Rectory Garden Center is located in the community of Wigan in the western part of England, between the cities of Liverpool and Manchester.

Life and works 

Cotton mill worker, Kevin Duffy (1945- 2024)) had to look for other activities when employment in the mills declined. With his wife he did a musical act in pubs around and then he began selling products from his garden.

These sales developed well and gradually Duffy ended up as director of a garden centre.

picture made in the late 1990s

Around 1995, after the death of his wife, Kevin Duffy began making creations from concrete, probably with the idea to somehow embellish the garden center.

He started by making two-dimensional facades in Tudor style, which he arranged in the garden. In preparing these structures Duffy re-used all kinds of demolition materials, like old doors.

In subsequent years he also would make sculptures and three-dimensional structures, like he made a chapel, that can be entered and that has some interior decorations.

Visitors can burn candles in the chapel, and if they leave a donation, Duffy in his turn will donate the collected amount to local charitable organisations.

In the course of the years Duffy has made a lot of sculptures and then he also has put a lot of energy in adding new structures to what gradually has become kind of a village, which houses various characters known from literature and history.

Here are some examples of sculptures Duffy made (pictures from the website of he Rectory Garden)

The pictures below (from Facebook) were shot in August 2019, when Tiramisu Bootfighter of La Valise, Galerie Ambulante (i.e. the suitcase at the feet of Kevin Duffy) visited the site. 

In this seventies Kevin Duffy had a stroke and he was taking it easy with regard to the maintenance of the site. His son Carl Duffy provided all the necessary support.

Kevin Duffy passed away in September 2024.

Currently the rectory garden is closed.

 Documentation, more pictures

* Website of the Garden Center, with the story and various pictures

* Article on SPACES website (2012)

* Article on Dr Tony Shaw's weblog, with a variety of pictures (May 2014)

* Entry on  website Outsider Art Now (July 2014)

Videos

* Video by Jeffry Patrick Web (2010, YouTube)

part 1

part 2

* A promotional video (2020, 4'03", YouTube) 

first published November 2008, last revised March 2025

Kevin Duffy
Rectory Garden Center

97 Rectory Road  

North Ashton, Wigan, North West England,  UK

open for the public

streetview 2016

Franck Barret, la Ferme Musée / the Museum at the Farm

pictures from the website of the Musée du Pays Foyen

At his farm, located near Sainte-Foy-la-Grande in the Aquitaine area in France, Franck Barret (1909-1988) had a museum where he exhibited his sculptures. 

Life and works

Born in the community of Saint-Antoine-de-Breuilh in a well to do family of farmers, as a young man Barret was a fan of cycle racing and he wanted a career in this sport. However, due to an accident, in 1934 he had to abandon this ambition.

So he focused upon farming and became the owner of a farm near Sainte-Foy-la-Grande.

After World War II, when he was in his late thirties, Barret got dreams and visions, which may have troubled him, but which anyway led him to depict in sculptures what he saw in his dreams.

Jeanne d'Arc

Untrained in making sculptures, Barret looked around for some material he could use, ending up with clay that could be found in the neighbourhood of the farm. So his sculptures became rather massive and heavy.

They represented all kinds of holy and famous persons, but Barret also created monsters, a Martian, a Cro Magnon man and other characters.

 the Martian

Many of these characters, dressed in imaginative outfits or painted in appropriate colours, were rather terrifying.

Barret for some forty years has been making these creations, which he displayed at the farm in barns adjacent to the farmhouse.

In the 1960s and 1970s local people used to make a Sunday-afternoon trip to the farm to view the sculptures.

Franck Barret died in 1988.

Part of the collection has been saved

After his death the collection became neglected, remained forgotten and since sculptures from clay are rather vulnerable, the collection was in danger of decay.

However, when around 2005 the farm had to be sold, the family looked around for ways to save the creations or at least some of them. They contacted a local group of volunteers who were active in realizing a local museum.

In 2007 this group, presided by Pierre Lamothe, removed the sculptures from the farm, a job of many months, both because of the condition of the creations after all the years of neglect and because of their weight (the largest ones weighed some 300 kilos).

The idea was to show (a selection of) the creations in the local museum. This project required a lot of time, since most activities had to be done by volunteers and many sculptures had to be restored.

In September 2010 however, at the occasion of  the Heritage Night, the museum had a first exposition of some of Barret's creations as reported in the newspaper Sud Ouest of September 22, 2010.

In December 2010 the website of the Musée du Pays Foyen published a new, illustrated page, dealing with life and works of Franck Barret ¹.

Documentation

* Website Habitants-Paysagistes with a series of photos (1988) by Francis David

* Website of the Musée du Pays Foyen  (2010

* Article in regional newspaper Sud-Ouest September 2010

* Jeanine Rivais, "Le monde oublie de Franck Barret, sculpteur", article (1997), on her website

first published Nov ember 2008, last revised February 2021

note
¹  I like to acknowledge that I could update my original post of November 2008 thanks to the information on the museum's website (December 2010)

Franck Barret
la Ferme Musée
33200 Sainte-Foy-le-Grande, dept Gironde, region Nouvelle Aquitaine, France
site doesn't exist anymore 
creations have been transferred to the local museum. 
visits of the museum on appointment only (see website)

Louis Ame, Musée / Museum "Truck stop America"

photo by Paskal Larsen (2006) as on webzine Foutraque

not available anymore

 

Driving the coastal road from St Malo to St Michel in Brittany, France, one will traverse the small coastal community of Hirel. It happened to be a good idea to pause there a while and visit the Truck Stop America, but this art environment doesn't exist anymore.

Life and works

The Truck Stop America was a museum/art environment created by Louis Ame (1927-2020), also known as Moustache.

Louis Ame portrayed in 2016

this picture and the next one

courtesy of Sylvie Perrot-Clemot

Retired for many years, Ame was a bus driver who mainly worked in Paris.

Maybe also because of this job behind the wheel, he developed a great passion for all types of vehicles driving on the road, especially those typical american ones, those big trucks and buses.

So once settled in Hirel he began to express this passion. From old tins, pieces of aluminium and other scrap material he constructed small scale replicas of these trucks and in the same way, re-using all kind of materials, he also assembled planes, ships and cars.

 studio of Louis Ame

Since spring 1993 all his creations could be seen in his own small museum, located off the coastal road of Hirel, along the Baie du Mont Saint Michel.

Louis Ame passed away in October 2020.

In August 2023 a reader of this blog reported that the building with Louis Ame's museum had been removed and had been replaced by a fenced lawn. Is is not clear what happened with the items that filled the museum.

Documentation
* Article and series of pictures (June 2012) on the weblog of Sophie Lepetit

* Article (in English, October 2012) by Marisa Martin on WND Diversions

* Article paying tribute to Louis Ame on the website of Les Rochers de Rothéneuf

Video

* Video by Jo Pinto Maya (YouTube, May 2011, 4'27")

first published November 2008, last revised June 2024

Louis Ame

Museum "Truck Stop America"

36 rue Quesmiere
35120 Hirel, dept Ille-et-Vilaine, region Brittany, France
site doesn't exist anymore

Musée-jardin de la Luna Rossa / Garden museum of la Luna Rossa

part of of the Luna Rossa Garden Museum 
with  sculptures by Séraphin Enrico 
(photo courtesy Marcello 14, Flickr)

Initiated by Olivier Thiébaut, the Musée-jardin de la Luna Rossa is a private museum, located in the rue Damozanne in Caen, Normandy. France. The museum is set in a garden that was originally owned by a lady living in rue Damozanne. She left the 950m² of land to the municipality on condition that it would be used as a garden¹. The municipality agreed with the use of the garden as an exhibition space. as in Thiébaut's concept.

Supported by a group of volunteers, one of its aims is to save the works of creators of art environments that are in danger of neglect or demolishment. As the site was not maintained for many years, the volunteers involved had to give the garden a major makeover.

The museum opened in 1996.

Also in 1996 Thibaut published Bonjour aux promeneurs. Sur les chemins de l'art brut, Paris (Ed. Alternatives), a book, currently a collector's item, that describes seventeen outsider artists² and creators of environments in western and northern France. As this book, the museum focuses on creations which originate from these parts of France

The museum also has a number of works that originate from sites that already have disappeared (such as creations made by Enrico and by Tourquetil).

The name of the museum is derived from the inscription la Luna Rossa on the Venus sculpture in the group of sculptures made by Séraphin Enrico (picture above). This weblog has the interesting story that relates how Thiebaut and friends in 1995 recovered the dumped sculptures made by Séraphin Enrico.

The museum's collection includes works of Fernand Chatelain, Euclide da Costa Ferreira, Emile Taugourdeau, André Hardy, Louis Tourquetil, Séraphin Enrico, Arthur Vanabelle, Bodan Litnianski, Robert Vasseur and others.

More pictures
* On the weblog les grisgris de Sophie (May 2010) a description of the museum and a varied collection of pictures.
* On Flickr a photostream by Herbaltablet, uploaded July 2009.
* Another series by Marcello 14, uploaded between September 2008 and August 2009

notes
¹ this info thanks to Françoise Genty
² the book documents the works of Euclide da Costa Ferrera, Fernand Chatelain, Henri Chéné, Louis Tourquetil, Raymond Macé, André Hardy, Robert Vasseur, Emile Taugourdeau, Jean Clérembaux, Auguste Le Boulch, Arsène Enouf, Eugène Firek, Gabriel Albert, Bodan Litnianski, Joseph et Paulette Alberca,  Arthur Vanabelle and Séraphin Enrico

first published November 2008, last revised December 2021


Musée-jardin de la Luna Rossa
6 rue Damozanne
14000 Caen France
open Sundays 10-18 h (apr-oct)

Jacques Lucas, La maison sculptée / The sculpted house

this picture and the next one 
from the website of the Maison Sculptée

The Maison sculptée de l'Essart, located in Brittany, France, is an art environment that is inspired on Robert Tatin's Musée des champs, located in the Mayenne area.

Life and works

This art environment has been created by Jacques Lucas, who was born in 1944 in Poitiers, France.

Lucas studied art history, got a degree in archaeology at Rennes University, worked for some ten years for the French national department of cultural affairs and in the 1960s as an autodidact painter he began making paintings.

From childhood on he was fascinated by the atmosphere of cathedrals and medieval churches such as those one finds in Brittany.

In 1968 he bought a derelict house in Essart, a hamlet in the community of Amanlis in Brittany.

In 1967 he had met Robert Tatin and very inspired by the work of this artist who constructed an art environment near the cottage where he lived, Lucas decided to transform his house into an art environment too.

this picture and the next one: screenprints from the video
by Serflac (see documentation)

Using concrete he began making all kinds of structures such as walls, arcades. a chapel, bassins and free standing items, which he decorated with spirals, circles and comparable geometric signs,  occasionally interspersed with images of human faces or animals.

The decorations have often been finished with acrylic paint, but gradually the colors have disappeared due to the influence of weather and sunlight.

Lucas has been working on this project for over thirty years, his most active period being the years from 1983 until 1986.

In 1993 he moved to an atelier in Nice, where he concentrated on making paintings. The following years he would return to Essart during the summer months to continue his project there.

An association of friend currently owns the site

Problems Lucas encountered with the tax authorities in the early 1990s, resulted in 1997 in a court ruling formally saying that the house had to be sold.

An association of friends in November 2003 succeeded in buying the property and assured that Lucas could continue working there. Since 2008 he and his wife live permanently in the house in Essart, where Lucas mainly is active in making paintings. Interviewed by a regional newspaper in the spring of 2015 when he was in his early 70s, he explained that due to his age he no longer felt able to further develop the Maison sculptée.

In an article dated July 26, 2019 Catherine Janneau from TV3 France Bretagne interviewed Lucas and looked back on his career.

Documentation
* official website 

* diaporama of creations

* article in newspaper Ouest-France, march 15, 2015
* article (July 2019) by Catherine Janneau TV 3 France Bretagne

Videos
* fragment (2018) about the site on the North France trip video by Serflac (YouTube, starts at  24.12,  cannot be embedded here)

* video by NEO (2023) on their Facebook page (cannot be embedded here)

* Video (3'36", May 2019, YouTube)  by TV France 3 Bretagne

first published November 2008, last revised November 2023

Jacques Lucas

La Maison Sculptée
l'Essart
35150 Amanlis, dept Ille-et-Vilaine, region Brittany, France
can be visited in the summer months
see website for directions

Bodan Litnianski, Jardin aux coquillages / Garden of shells

Portrait (2002) by Laurent Jacquy 

Life and works

Bodan Litnianski (1913-2005) migrated around 1930 from Ukraine to France, where he got a job as a bricklayer and a mason. After World War II, that saw him captivated, he returned to France and bought a house in Viry-Noureuil near Chauny in the north of France.

He had to restore this old house and when doing this he also decorated some outside walls with shells. This entailed that the neighbours began to denote the site as a garden of shells, a name also used in publications about this art environment

After he had decorated the exterior walls, Litnianski continued the project by decorating the garden along the street. He would haunt the region with a moped and collect discarded materials, like puppets, toys, all kinds of scrap...

He arranged these objets trouvés into very colourful columns which he erected in the front garden. All constructions were made very solid. Litnianski stood his ground in masonry indeed.

Litnianski in the early 1980's

this photo and the next one (as on website Habitants-Paysagistes)

published here in agreement with the photographer Francis David

Working vertically maybe was not just a creative idea, it probably also was a practical necessity because of the small size of the plot.

Most columns have weather-vanes on top, mostly constructed on winter days by re-employing discarded materials.

Litnianski liked to meet people who came to visit his creation and he often told proudly that he had devised its layout entirely himself.

Is there a future for the site ?

After Bodan Litnianski died in 2005, his wife Emilie Litnianski continued to take care of the site, until in 2008 she also passed away. From that time the site has been closed for the public.

A regional newspaper reported in June 2009 that the house was put on sale by the inheritors, who hoped that someone or some organization would show interest in maintaining the site. Another regional newspaper reported in August 2013 that the site was still on sale and that the vegetation was increasing in size.

But then, in June 2018 Laurent Jacquy reported on his weblog Les beaux dimanches that in 2016 the property had been sold to a private party. As photographs dated June 2018 demonstrate, the new owner (or owners) left the front wall, the decorations on the western wall and probably most of the columns intact and also restrained the (still extensive) vegetation.

Unfortunately... the French website Tipeek reported that in May 2023 the site was closed with a padlock, that the vegetation was gradually regaining its rights and that the columns, especially those painted, were starting to collapse..... So, will there be a future for the site ?

Documentation 
* An early report about this art environment was published in: Francis David, Guide de l'art insolite: Nord/Pas de Calais, Picardie. Paris (Herscher), 1984 -93 p, ill.

* Denys Riout, introduction Agnès Varda, photo's Benjamin Teissèdre and Laurent Jacquy, Le jardin des merveilles de Bodan Litnianski, 2004  (Texts in French and English, the book can still be ordered at Editions Vivement Dimanche). In OEE-texts I republished the preface of Agnès Varda (2004).
*Also in OEE-texts the translation of an article (2009) by the architect Jean-Marc Huygen. This article is a plea to save the site as an example of how re-employment of the waste of society can contribute to durability.
* Article on SPACES website
* Bodan Litnianski appeared in Agnès Varda's movie Les glaneurs et la glaneuse (France, 2000, 90m)
* Website Habitants-paysagistes (Lille Art Museum from March 2018 on) has a series of pictures by Francis David (1980, 1990) and l'Aracine (1981-1996)

Video

* Litnianski in 1998 at age 85 was filmed for Jarvis Cocker's Journeys into the Outside (1999, on You Tube in 2012, see my post of August 23, 2012). Here is the sequence with Litnianski (on YouTube/Les beauxdimanches):

first published November 2008, last revised July 2023

Bodan Litnianski

Jardin du Coquillage

15 rue Jean Jaures

Viry-Noureuil, dept Aisne, region Hauts-de-France. France

02300 Chauny France
closed for the public