images (June 2025) in this post published here in agreement with photographer Martin Besnard
The municipality of Novo Selo, with over 2,900 inhabitants (2011), is located along the southern bank of the Danube River in northwestern Bulgaria. The Danube also forms the border with Romania, located north of the river.
The municipality, which includes several wine-growing estates, encompasses a number of villages, including Novo Selo, which forms the administrative center.
A Museum about the Creation of the World
Novo Selo is a community that has existed since ancient times and when Todor Atanasov was its mayor, he was very interested in its history.
This led him to the idea at some point of creating an open-air museum depicting this history, also to attract tourists.
He shared the idea with several people in his circle, and it turned out they were also enthusiastic and wanted to contribute to such a project. And so a kind of an open air museum would indeed be realized on a four-hectare site near Novo Selo.
Among the people who volunteered to participate in the project, were a local librarian, a school principal and a former municipal official. They each contributed to the development of the project in their own way, based on their own knowledge and research.
The construction of what can be considered an art environment, based on substantive contributions from various interested parties, began in 2010.
As the construction of the art environment progressed, a problem arose because creating the buildings and decorative elements, realized in a protected nature reserve. was not based on an officially granted permit.
The national inspectorate in question assessed the existing violations and issued a fine, which was paid by the parties involved.
It was then up to the Novo Selo municipal council to decide whether or not the site could further develop, .
The council apparently made a favorable decision with regard to the site, as in 2015 the newspaper 360Mag (see documentation) referred to the art environment in Novo Selo as "one of the most successful projects in Bulgarian tourism."
When this article about the art environment was published in 2025, accompanied by photographs also taken in 2025, the mayor had retired, and the area where the site had been built was adorned with a variety of creations.
The connection between the somewhat isolated creations is not clearly visible in the images, but the underlying idea that the development of humanity is depicted in the sculptures and structures can, with a little effort, be discerned.
The images in this post provide a first impression of the creations on display in the site.
The dinosaurs, pictured above and below, are quite dominant and take the viewer back to times before humans began to inhabit the Earth.
The scenes presented in the four small-format images, further above and below, show how, during the early development of humanity on earth, people were housed in small, self-made shelters,
These are clearly scenes related to the development of humanity, with which most people are familiar.
However, in addition to these scenes clearly linked to the development of humanity, the site also includes a number of smaller creations, such as various animals, Indians, a ship, a tree of life and also a kind of a tomb, scenes in which it is more difficult to see in which stage of humanity's development they fit.
The massive gateway depicted in the very first photo can be associated with a medieval structure, a supposition more or less supported by the white rider riding a white horse,.
Todor Atanasov, portrayed in 2025 in the very first photo, now retired, devotes a great deal of energy to maintaining the art environment as it has developed thus far.
He does have ideas about expanding the site, for example with a replica of an Egyptian pyramid, but whether he should embark on such a project at his age, remains to be seen.
The video in the documentation shows how the art environment is situated in the area outside Novo Selo.
Documentation
* Article (2014) in regional newspaper btvnovinite
all images (August 2025) courtesy of Dominique Clement; as on Facebook
The many images in this post give an idea of a walking trail in a forest, which is lined with 24 sculptures.
The forest, known for a large, isolated monolith of hard limestone and classified as Natura 2000 for its rare flora, is located in the commune of Sollières-Sardières, in the Rhône-Alpes region of France.
Life and works
The sculptures along the walking path were created by Serge Couvert, born and raised in the village of Aussois, a community with approximately 680 inhabitants (2008), located in southwestern France.
As was customary in his family, he initially worked as a furniture maker, but upon closer inspection, his true interest turned to making sculptures.
Since virtually no biographical information about him is available on the internet, it is unclear whether his artistry is based on an academic education.
His family of furniture makers had permission to use a section of the forest for collecting timber, and in 2014, Couvert, armed with his sculpture tools, went into the forest to reduce a spruce tree to a height of three meters and transform it in a sculpture.
That was the beginning of a sculpture trail he would create in the following years, likely with the approval of the forest authorities
It became a project that Serge Couvert would work on for years. In the first four years of the project, he created some fourteen sculptures.
In total he would transform 24 trees into sculptures. The sculptures along the trail are unmistakably made in the artist's own personal style.
The images in this post show that Couvert could follow a complex formative approach, for example by creating a sculpture of two people embracing each other, or transforming a single ttree into a configuration of two interlocking parts.
Couvert also had to be a road builder, because all the sculptures he created had to be connected by a walking path.
As is the case with all sculpture trails in Europe presented in this blog, Couvert's creations are free to access.
The fact that he realized his project with the approval of the local authorities is also evident from the advertising the tourist office initiated for his sculpture trail.
Serge Couvert accompanied his project by making drawings or even models of the sculpture's configuration as he envisioned it.
Each original creation also features a copper plaque with the name of the creation or a text by a well-known author.
Documentation
*Pages with practical info about visiting the sculpture trail by the Aussois Townhal
* Article (2017) on the website of Bernard Robert, with a variety of illustrations
* Entry on the website of the municipality of Aussois
Images on this website by Veli Grano,published here with permission from the Association for Rural Culture and Education, MSL
The image above shows a half-hectare area in a forest, designed as an art environment with concrete sculptures, a site located far from the main roads in southwestern Finland.
Life and works
This area was designed by Teuvo Jalonen (born in1961) together with his wife Marjana Perttula. a couple living in the city of Pori with some 83.000 inhabitants, located some 10 km away from the Gulf of Bothnia. The photos in this post give an idea of the site and the sculptures of all kinds of animals located there.
Jalonen has a job at a paper mill in Pori. He's not retired yet; that will be in 2026 when he turns 65, the standard retirement age in Finland.
His partner suspected that Teuvo had an artistic bent and she bought some modeling clay.This turned out to be a real hit.
Jalonen shaped the clay into a mammoth, and then filled the couple's home with numerous other small clay sculptures.
He preferred creating all kinds of animals, exotic and rare ones, but especially cats, which are interesting to sculpt because of the plasticity of their bodies.
In 2012, two important developments occurred in Teuvo Jalonen's development as a non-professional artist. He began creating large sculptures, and the couple acquired a space in a forest to situate these creations within an art environment.
He created the lifelike, large sculptures from cast concrete. Just as with his smaller creations, he showed a preference for animals in his choice of subjects.
The image above shows a tiger in a design that demonstrates great realism, which also applies to the animals depicted in the photos below.
As said, the second development in 2012 was the couple's acquisition of a piece of land in a forest.
Teuvo's parents had bought a half-hectare plot in mid-1979, which Teuvo and Marjaana were able to re-purchase from their inheritance.
The forest, called Metsäpuisto, is located along a back road near the municipality of Eurajoki, about 40 km south of Pori.
The focal point of the art environment in the forest is the Siberian tiger. There are now also deer and a lynx, and Teuvo intended to add other animals, such as a raccoon, a badger, and a brown bear.....
Documentation
* Article (undated) on the website of the Finnish Association for Rural Culture and Education
* Article (undated) on a regional website of above Association
The house in the picture above, fully decorated with shells, is located along a street called Avinguda de la Diputació in the Spanish city Manlleu with some 20.000 inhabitants (2018) and about 80 km north of the town of Barcelona.
The rather industrialized community is located along the RiverTer, which rises in the eastern Pyrenees and flows into the Mediterranean Sea after about 200 km.
Life and works
The building, colloquially called Casa de les Pedres (House of stones), was built by Pere Vila Farrés, who was born in 1927.
As a boy, he assisted his parents with renovations and at the age of seventeen he went to help a mason who came to do a job in the family home. He did this so well that he was employed by the mason, with whom he worked for some fifteen years
Then for thirty years he had a job in a metal factory.
In 1957, when he was thirty, Pere Vila got married. The couple would have children.
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In his spare time, with his own hands he accomplished a building along the Avenue Diputació, aconstructionthat included two houses, one for him and his wife and the other one for a descendant.
It was a major project, because the two houses were built on land that in the past was sometimes flooded by the nearby river Ter and therefore the building had to rest on a solid foundation, which he also made himself.
Pere Vila retired in 1990, when he was 63. He also retired because he wanted to undertake activities he really liked. For him that included both catching fish in the nearby river and decorating his house, using pebbles that he could collect during or after fishing.
It became a decorative project with a number of componentes, which are described below
Decorations on the front wall and on the roof
As can be seen in the first two photos above, the facades of the two houses along Avenue Diputació are almost entirely decorated with pebbles, this with the exception of a flag with yellow and red stripes.
On the roof there are six bell towers and some sculptures of people.
Decorations on the wall in the side street
On the left corner of the front of the house, a side street begins called Battle Pau Caballeria. Other than the front of the building, the side wall along this street has a variety of decorations.
In articles reviewing this art environment, it is mentioned that the decoration of this wall consists largely of lines, reminiscent of rivers and roads, a large whole interrupted by smaller items.
It is difficult to see in the image above, but on the left side of the wall there is indeed a line work that develops from bottom to top and can be interpreted in many ways.
In the images around it can be seen that the side wall, in addition to the line work, also includes smaller creations, such as above a representation of a small house and bottom right a scene of building with a small tower, representing a small church or a small castle.
Such small creations are spread across the entire side wall, in all kinds of designs.
To round off this part about decorations on the wall in the side street, above is another image of the right corner of the wall in the side street, where a small cage manifests a probably special person, flanked on the left by a round dish with something like two bunches of grapes.
Decorations in the garden
Beyond the side wall in the side street begins the backyard of Pere Vila's building, separated from the street by an iron fence supported by large round stone pillars.
The image above also shows, adjacent to the fence, a sculpture consisting of a number of towers, as enlarged in the image below.
The rear walls of the two houses, bordering the garden, are almost entirely decorated with shells, with the exception of a small vertical strip on one of the rear walls, which is decorated with an extensive series of small colourful items, which appear to depict heraldic themes.
In the Catalonian newspaper EL9NOU there is a photo, dated November 2023, showing Pere Vila sitting against the back of the house, surrounded by replicas of internationally known creations, such as the Eiffel Tower, Gaudí's Sagrada Família and other cathedrals.
However, on Google Streetview from July 2024 these cathedrals are difficult to distinguish.
Back of the garden
At the back of the garden, bordering the CarrerBatlle Pau Caballeria, there is a small building that is used as a garage. Apart from the entrance door, this building is also lavishly decorated, albeit with somewhat smaller shells.
The images are also somewhat smaller. They mainly relate to means of transport, such as an airplane, a car, a bus, a boat or a hot air balloon.
There is also an image of Halley's comet, which was visible in the eighties.
detail of the garage wall
Per Vila stopped working on his extensive project when COVID broke out in Spain in January 2020. He was already in poor health at that time and he passed away on February 16, 2025
Documentation
* Article (Februari 2025) on website Rondaller, with a variety of photos, also of the interior of Vila's house.
* Article in Jo Farb Hernàndez' book Singular Spaces II, 5 Continents Editions. 2023
Pere Vila
Casa de les Pedres
Avenue Diputació 86 and 88
Manlleu, dept of Barcelona, region Catalonia, Spain
Images by Kimmo Känsälä and Susanna Salokannel, published here with permission from the Association for Rural Culture and Education, MSL
Kortjärvi is a village with about 130 inhabitants, the vast majority of whom speak Swedish.
The village is part of the municipality of Kronoby in the Ostrobothnia region in western Finland and it is surrounded by forests and about 20 small lakes and wetland.
Within the village grounds there is a nature trail that leads through the forest and along the lakes, while a series of wooden sculptures along the path.contributes to a pleasant walk.
The personality pictured above,with the blue cap, ended up in a mud puddle, is an example of such a wooden sculpture, just as the one below
These sculptures have been created by Göte Edsvik, who loves nature and began constructing the path in 1998.
The nature trail has a short and a longer route along forest paths and boardwalks, and runs through a beautiful landscape of lakes, forests and fields.
From the perspective of this blog, a significant feature of the trail is its decoration with wooden sculptures created by Edsvik. These wooden sculptures are more or less evenly distributed along the path, often accompanied by signs with commentary in Swedish.
The images in this post give an impression of the design of these sculptures and who or what they depict.
Broadly speaking, the collection comprises two types: representations of people in various capacities (as in the images at the very top) and various kinds of animals (as around).
The aforementioned Göte Edsvik not only created the sculptures, he also works hard to manage the hiking trail, which he began developing in 1998.
The road along which the access to the nature trail is located is named after him, but unfortunately, much more biographical information about him is not available online.
Documentation
* Article about the nature trail on the website of the Kortjärvi Village Association
* Article by Susanna Salokannel on the website of MSL (Association for Rural Culture and Education)
* Articleon the website of the municipality of Kronoby
Göte Edsvik
Sculptures along the Kortjärvi Nature Trail
Edsvikvägen 7
Kortjärvi, district Terjärv, municipality of Kronoby, region Ostrobothnia, Finland
The image above, made in 2023, shows a special building located behind a high hedge in Ondreville-sur-Essonne, a small municipality with some 350 inhabitants (2005) in the region Centre Val-de-Loire in France.
What makes this building special is that it was constructed using some 15.000 (empty) champagne bottles, a way of constructing that, as far as known, has not been applied before in the field of art environments in France
The image below, a postcard from 1971, shows what the building looked like in earlier years, when it was used as a cafe-restaurant.
a postcard from 1971
The site as shown in the postcard, situated along a local thoroughfare, exudes a cozy atmosphere, especially thanks to the parasols that have been set up.
To what extent the house itself, constructed using thousands of bottles, has such an atmospheric feel, requires further consideration.
this image and the next two published here iin agreement with Francis David
To attempt an assessment of this, photographs are available, such as those in the image above and below.
They were taken at the end of the last century by Francis David, who traveled through France in his spare time to capture images of a variety of art environments.
The image above shows that the person who designed the house added some playful elements to the structure, such as the slightly forward-leaning frames of the entrance door and the windows, and also the semi-circular extensions on the right side of the front facade.
And then, in the photo above, one can see that the roof of the house has its own character and has not been made with a design that is typical for roofs.
These specific elements give a somewhat looser character to the bottle house, which was designed and built by someone named Dufrenne, about whom no further information is available.
In addition to the way of building using bottles, some other creative expressions have also been added to this site.
In this regard, the photo above, also made by Francis David, shows a sculpture of a person, presumably working on the masonry of the house.
And then, there is also a sculpture of a figure situated near a section of the house, as shown in the image above. One might wonder if this is a representation of the builder of the bottle house, as the author of the Tipeek website, mentioned in the documentation, suggests.
Given the limited information publicly available about this art environment, which is also reflected in the articles about the site mentioned in the documentation, it is unclear whether these sculptures were also created by Mr. Dufrenne, but in all likelihood, they were.
This also applies to the nameplate pictured above, which, although difficult to read, states that the building bears the name Villa ma sueur (Villa my sweat).
Although little information exists about the origins and further development of this bottle house, the architectural style and the surrounding sculptural creations give this art environment a unique character.
Documentation
* Entry (undated) with a series of photographs by Francis David on the website Habitants-Paysagistes of the Lille Art Museum
* Article by Sonia Terhzaz, who visited the site in September 2024, on her website Cartographie des Rocamberlus
* Article (October 2024) on the website of Tipeek Photos
Monsieur Dufrenne
Maison Bouteilles
19 Chemin du Moulin de la Groue,
45233 Ondreville-sur-Essonne, dept Loiret, region Centre, France
