Marcel Vinsard, Sculpture garden

pictures are screenprints from the video by Yvan Ducognon

(see documentation) published here with his permission

click pictures to enlarge

Pontcharra is a community of some 6500 inhabitants in the east of France at the foothills of the French Alps, halfway between Chambéry and Grenoble.  Along its Avenue du Granier, on a side street, from 2001 on an imposing sculpture garden came into being, which in 2016 completely has been emptied: Marcel Vinsard's art environment.

Life and works

Marcel Vinsard (1930-2016) was a barber throughout his entire working life. 

In 2001, when he was in his early seventies, just before he retired, he began making sculptures, inspired to do so by a book about the Swiss sculptor and painter Alberto Giacometti. he had received from a friend. 

 

Vinsard, a self-taught artist who called himself a bricoleur (handyman, do-it-yourselver), at the outset made his creations from wood and bark. Later he turned to cellular concrete and then to polystyrene.

All other materials he used consisted of discarded objects, mostly from the local dump, which he visited regularly.

Interviewed in 2013 by local magazine Pontch Echos Vinsard said:

"My subjects are very diverse: celebrities from the political and the artistic world,  characters I did in the style of famous artists, animals, dreamlike creatures, figurines, totems, compositions of objects. The set is a real museum. I like to give my sculptures bright colors" (link to the magazine not available anymore).

Giacometti inspired him indeed. In 2013 Vinsard made some forty sculptures in the style of this sculptor and a poster in the garden read Le seul en France a faire des copies d'Alfredo Giacometti (the only one in France who makes copies of Alfredo Giacometti)

However, these forty sculptures were just a small part of his extensive body of work. By 2015 he had made a thousand creations.

These creations only filled the porch and the garden of his house, they were also lined up along the side street leading to the house.

And then the interior of the house was also abundantly filled with creations. Vinsard lived alone after his wife sadly died around the time he retired.

To all appearances, Vinsard's work was locally and regionally appreciated. Regional TV in April 2013 had a news item about him (link not available anymore), but which is also telling, both town halls of the neighbouring cities Grenoble and Chambéry have a sculpture of Vinsard on display.

Vinsard was a friendly man who was very willing to communicate about his work and meet visitors. He passed away July 23, 2016.

Exposition

In the context of the 6th Biennale Hors Normes (Lyon, 2015) a number of Vinsard's sculptures have been exposed at the Maison des jeunes et de la culture Mon Plaisir (28/9-26/10/2015, Lyon)

All sculptures removed in 2016

After Vinsard died his relatives removed all sculptures in order to sell the property. As reported by Bruno Montpied, the association La Sauce Singuliere could save some 200 artworks, and then a number of artworks have been included in private collections, but it is not impossible that the majority of creations has been demolished.

Documentation

* Booklet by Bruno Montpied. Marcel Vinsard, l'homme aux mille modèles. Paris (Ed l'Insomniaque), 2016. -80 p. (Published in the series La Petite Brute)

* Articles on the weblog of Bruno Montpied, September 27, 2015 and August 19, 2016

* Weblog Regard Artistique, September 24, 2011 (illustrated)

Video

* Video (April 2014) Le jardin extraordinaire de Marcel V,  by Yvan Ducognon (19'00", YouTube)

* Earlier videos by Ducognon  of Vinsard's art environment, one published January 2013 (27'55") and another one published July 2013 (11'53")

first published April 2015, last revised April 2022

Marcel Vinsard

Sculpture garden

216 avenue du Granier

38530 Pontcharra, dep Isère, region Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, France

streetview (2008)

all sculptures have been removed in 2016

Roger Lemìère, l'Afrique / Africa

pictures courtesy of Sophie Lepetit, from her weblog

Lamasquère is a community of some 1300 inhabitants, southwest of Toulouse, in southern France.

Located not far from the hustle and dense housing of the big city, this is quite, rural area, with detached houses, in general standing on relatively large plots of flat land.

Life and works

Roger Lemière (b. 1938) in 1984 began creating rather naturalistic sculptures of animals, an activity resulting over the years in a collection of some sixty items, scattered over the grounds around the house.  .

Not fabricated by using cement, but by using resin, the life-sized sculptures for a part depict wild-life animals, like a giraffe, a rhinoceros, an elephant, a zebra, and the like.

However, Lemière has created smaller species too, such as deer, monkeys, ibises..... .

Dotted with so many animals, the flat and relatively vast area around the house evoked an atmosphere of an African savanne, which was accentuated by the presence of a scene with a few traditionally portrayed African natives in  front of a hut..

Lemière. however, has never traveled to Africa and he has no special affection with that part of the world.

Like other creators of bestiaries (Bastouil, Diaz, Hardy, Vriet), he apparently just has been inspired by the concept of visualizing species of the animal kingdom, focusing as a matter of course on those present in  the collective western perception of fauna.

The collection has been disposed off in 2013

End 2012 it has become known via Sophie Lepetit's weblog, that Lemière has decided to dispose off his collection. . He was in his mid 70s and felt he was getting too old to take care of the creations in the years to come. 

He told Sonia Terhzaz, who visited him in September 2021, that he had suffered a stroke in December 2020, which limited his ability to perform physical activities (see the article in the documentation)

The sculptures have been delivered to someone in France who might exhibit them in one or the other setting, unknown at this time. Who knows what some day the public might get to see..... 

Documentation

* More information and pictures (2012) on Sophie Lepetit's weblog, November 27 2012, November 28 2012, November 29 2012

* An earlier note (2008) on Bruno Montpied's weblog

* Article by Sonia Terhzaz on her website Cartographie des Rocamberlus (environnements d'art singulier) with an account of the visit she made to Roger Lemiére in September 2021.

Roger Lemière
l'Afrique
3131600 Lamasquère, France

site doesn't exist anymore (since around 2013)

Fiorenzo Pilia, Il giardino fantastico / The fantastic garden

pictures (2013) courtesy of Gerda Seppenster/Andries de Jong

The Italian isle of Sardinia has a sculpture garden with some very special characteristics.

Life and works

Fiorenzo Pilia (b. 1933), a farmer who didn't enjoy much formal education and had no artistic training, in 1993 at age sixty began making sculptures, which he displayed in his orchard of some 4000 m².

Like so many other self-taught artists he uses residual material, but a special feature of his constructions is, that he applies various contemporary materials such as resin, cable waste and scrap of modern production processes. 

One of the special constructions of the garden is a sculpture of a lying female, as in above picture, some 15 meters long, made by applying a mixture of foam and glue to a model from chicken wire. The inside of this sculpture, which can be entered via a door between the two legs, shows internal organs made of various wire-work and cable material.

This creation represents the mystery of life. It took Pilia some four years to complete it.

However, the garden has many more creative constructions, such as a towery structure (picture above) that represents one of the former New York Twin Towers during the 9-11 attack.

There are scenes of grouped people, often very colorful, on top of a rather large pedestal.
.

Such a pedestal may have a hidden door that opens to a surprise.

One will also come next to a strange flying machine and kind of a crocodile with a tail in the form of a hand, as shown below.

Pilia likes working with gauze, chicken wire and other iron material, which he transforms for example into a more than life-sized figure facing the sky. 

Fiorenzo Pilia's fantastic garden is about a kilometer outside the Sardinian community of San Sperate, which has some fame as a "village of artists", initiated in 1968 by Italian sculptor Pinuccio Sciola.

Documentation

* Article and pictures in the Costruttori di Babele website (in Italian)

* Il Giardino Fantastico is on Facebook (from march 2012 on)
* A set of pictures (June 2013) on my Flickr page

* Article (January 2021) by Danila de Pasquale on website Mam-marketing

Video
* Video "Il mistero dell donna" by Nodux2 (10'57", YouTube, 

May 2011)

Fiorenzo Pilia

Giardino fantastico

Strada di San Sperate a Decimomannu

San Sperate, Sardegna, Italy

can be visited when the artist is at the location

first published February 2012, last revised March 2022