Roger Petit, Jardin avec des installations de fer / Garden with iron installations

pictures (2017) courtesy of Sophie Lepetit

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The picture above shows a backyard located along a street in the community of Couture d'Argenson in the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region in France. It's a small community with some 400 inhabitants ¹.

Life and works

This backyard, which is mainly decorated with a variety of items and installations made from discarded ironware, is a creation of Roger Petit, about whom not much biographical data are known.

He was born in May 1951, was enlisted with the French Foreign Legion and joined the French Marine, Never married, he has no children.

Since French soldiers after about 25 years of service may retire when they are in their mid-forties, it is very well possible that Petit in the middle or late 1990's got retired and then settled in Couture d'Argenson. 

And maybe once settled or some years later, he also began decorating the backyard of his house, that is located on a corner, the front side facing a main street while the backyard is adjacent to a side street, separated from that street by a somewhat messy built-up brick wall.

Some stones in this wall are marked with inscriptions, such as le triple fer (the triple iron), la commanderie (the commandery), la plantation (the planting), cedre (cedar) or rouge (red), while there also is a marble nameplate with the name of the resident/creator of the site.

The wall at the rear of the house (actually an assembly of the main building and an adjoining smaller building) is decorated by three large-scale compositions of iron elements.  The picture below shows one of these creations,  a more or less haphazard combination of all kinds of iron rings, rods and objects. probably just meant as a creation with a decorative function.

Incidentally, the wall also contains smaller items, sometimes textual in nature, but mostly with a decorative character.

Most of the iron items that Petit uses in his installations come from the dump, although he also buys these nowadays.

In the back of the garden there is an installation consisting of an accumulation of both large and smaller iron items such as corrugated iron, fences, rings and a street sign, a constellation that a lot of people will not regard as a creative construction. 

Indeed, the local authorities are not so happy with the site, but Petit has a good relationship with the local residents.

Documentation

* Entry (March 2018) on the weblog of Sophie Lepetit

* Two pictures (2014) on the weblog Pedalons

Video
Video by Bogey Bogey (1'43", YouTube, November 2016)

Note
¹ I like to acknowledge that this post is based on an article in the weblog of Sophie Lepetit, which as far as I know is the only available source on the internet discussing this site.

Roger Petit

Jardin avec des installations de fer

2 route Gours

79110 Couture d'Argenson, dept Deux-Sèvres, region Nouvelle-Aquitaine, France

can be seen from the road

streetview

Alexander Dvoretsky, сбор объектов в память о СССР / collection of objects in memory of the USSR

this picture and the next four (2009) \

screenprints from a video by Tatiana Vasilievna

Above picture shows a site, kind of a museum, which could be visited around 2009 in the Russian city of Izhevsk. Meanwhile this café-museum has disappeared. The museum's collection as such still exists, but is ambulatory and the owner is looking for a permanent place.

Life and works

The collection is the life's work of Alexander Dvoretsky, who was born in 1956 in Krasnoyarsk, a large city in Siberia. After his primary education he went to work in a factory that produced worsted yarn. About his other employments nothing is known, as it is also unknown when he went to live in Izhevsk.

Anyhow, in the 1980s something happened that would give an important turn to Dvoretsky's further life. In one way or another he became in possession of an old debt letter, dating from the early years of the Soviet Union, which triggered him in such a way that he began collecting objects that carried the memory of the years of the USSR.

His collection grew and grew, up to currently some 30.000 items. many of small size, but also several of a rather large size, especially a collection of Russian cars from earlier years.

Although Dvoretsky was often approached to sell some items, in particular certain cars, he refused to do so, because he wanted to keep the collection together. His dearest wish was to exhibit it in a fixed location.

In may 2009 Dvoretsky could realise his dream. Together with his son he began a café, located in a small park in the city and open during the summer months. In the green area around the café he installed his collection. 

The pictures above give some idea of the smaller items in the collection such as clocks, accordions, tape-recorders, decorative items, TV sets, radios, a variety of insignia and pins, football pennants, busts of Lenin, old money, bottles, samovars, plates, cassettes, bags, chairs, suitcases and of course these old cars and motorcycles from earlier years.

Unfortunately, the café-museum soon came to an end. After the first rental period the contract was not renewed and Dvoretsky had to start looking for another location.

 this picture and the next two (2014) 

from the website drive2 

However, a new permanent location didn't come available and Dvoretsky and his collection had to move from one place to another. The picture above and the two below were made in 2014, when the site was located on a spot near a cooperative garage along the Volkinskoye Highway in Izhevsk.

The images of the car make it clear that Dvoretsky has a way of presentation which is not focused upon presenting the specific character of each individual item. He rather presents a total image in which the various objects form part of a larger colorful whole, are provided with decorative inscriptions or serve as support for other elements in the presentation.

Below are some more pictures of the decorated car above. They were taken in 2012 during open air festivities on the occasion of the day of the city of Izhevsk.

this picture and the next two 

by Maratochka (Livejournal June 2012)

  

details

the installation seen from the side

The pictures show that the red car is part of an installation which apart from other items also includes another car and a motorcycle standing on a roof that in turn is backed up by ten uprights. A car showroom wouldn't present the models in such a way. 

Dvoretsky creative way of dealing with the objects he has collected, combining these in a non-obvious way, adding text signs, transforming some items into an installation, implies that the entire display of the objects can be seen as an art environment.

The search for a permanent place continues

Dvoretsky continues his efforts to get a permanent place for his collection, although the local authorities show little inclination to cooperate. In 2016 he wrote a letter to Vladimir Putin, the president of Russia, to get his cooperation.

To my knowledge currently Dvoretsky's collection is housed on a small parcel near a forest at the outside of Izhevsk.

It was reported  that Zoya Lebedeva, a well known artist in Russia, is interested in Dvoretsky and his collection. In consultation with her a plan would be considered to situate the collection on a rented plot in the community of Buranovo, some 30 km away from Izhevsk (Buranovo is the hometown of the Buranovskiye Babushki, a folk group that represented Russia in the 2012 Eurovision Song Contest). 

Other reports (end 2016) say that Dvoretsky is disappointed about the lack of cooperation of the local authorities and considers to sell the collection. To my knowledge in 2017 and 2018 the internet had no reports about further developments.

Documentation

* Article (January 2010) on Live Internet by Izhevchanka about the Cafe-Museum

* Article (June 2016) in local newspaper Susanin,news with a large series of pictures (This article reports about Dvoretsky's letter to president Putin)

* Article (November 2016) on the website Day.org saying that Dvoretsky, disappointed about the lack of cooperation, is considering to sell his collection

Video

* Video of the Café-Museum by Tatiana Vasilievna (7'15", You Tube, sept 2009)

Alexander Dvoretsky
Collection of objects that memorize the USSR 
Izhevsk, Udmurt Republic, Russia
visitors welcome

Deva Manfredo, La selva di sogno / Dreamwoods

Mainly composed of single-handedly arranged stones, Dreamwoods, located in a forest in northern Italy, is one of the few sites in the field of European art environments made almost exclusively from a large variety of stones ¹.

Life and works

The self-taught artist who created this artwork was born in 1949 in Duderstadt, Germany as Manfred Flucke. After primary education, he went to Hamburg to study sociology and history, after which he for some years wandered around making paintings and drawings, until he in 1977 felt inspired by meditation.

He joined Osho's movement and renamed Deva Manfredo, around 1980 he moved to Italy where he went to live in Osho Miasto, the biggest Osho center in Italy, located in a beautiful area in Tuscany, not far from Sienna. He would reside there for some 25 years, working as a graphic designer, photographer and barkeeper.

Around 2006 Manfredo left the Miasto commune. He has kept "Manfredo" as his artist name and currently lives in a Tuscan village.

a decorated tree
(this picture and the next four {2017} courtesy of Boris van Es)

In an interview Manfredo said:  "Since I was a child I was fascinated by the beauty and form of stones, particularly the ones which have been polished to perfection by the to and fro of the ocean waves".  He especially likes the immobility, timelessness and eternity of this material.

When one day around 1980 he just by chance was busy with some stones and felt that by arranging them he had created something beautiful, he got inspired to make a number of such creations and install these in a natural  area.

So soon after Manfredo had settled in the Osho center, he began to consider setting up an outer space with a specific collection of stones. He was aware of a place in an extensive oak wood near the center where he lived and in 1981 he installed there his first stone works.

faces

The forest was not his property, maybe it belonged to the commune, but anyhow initially there was no question of appropriation, because the site remained without a fence and the stones Manfredo used for his compositions were laid loose on the ground or on top of each other.

Currently (2017), some 35 years later, the land is rented long-term from the owner of the grounds, the site has some 200 creations, some quite a size, there is a gift shop at the entrance and paths cross the forest, but there still is no fence and the animals of the forest have free access.

a large mandala of colored stones

Sorted into a large compartmentalized storage box, Manfredo has a large stock of stones in many colors, an item already intrusive as such and rather useful to make multi colored planar structures.

From his passion for meditation it is obvious that among the creations in Dreamwoods one finds a number of mandalas, circular geometric patterns of Hinduist origin that symbolically depict the cosmos. The figure picture above shows that such a mandala can have a rather large size.

a mosaic

But there are also less esoteric mosaics, often performed in squares or rectangles and located on the ground.

rising structures

The site also includes a large number of vertical structures made of stacked stones, some standing on their own, others standing in a smaller or larger combinations.

Piling the stones into stacks, Manfredo uses no glue or cement. The stones are just hold together by gravity.

picture from Facebook

Some of these combinations of stone piles are grouped in such a way that one gets the impression to look at an impressive citiscape with a variety of high and low elements, some rising up to five meters.

The picture above shows the City of Mandaland, as it was in 2021, when new items such as a piazza and a theater had been added. In such artworks Manfredo may also processes glass and marble.

anthropomorphic figure

(picture {2017) courtesy of Boris van Es)

At some moment Manfredo also began making anthropomorphic characters. An observer of these creations said: 

"... I have the impression that they do not seem to have been ‘put’ there, rather it is as if the stones had decided one early morning to arrange themselves into these forms".

this picture and the next one (both 2019) from Facebook

In 2019 Flucke began using recyclable material such as the plastic bottles and the stacked plastic cups, shown in the photo above

.......just as he also created ensembles from remnants of metal. 

It's a developing story.

picture from Facebook

Indeed, early 2020 there was further development. Manfredo started working with driftwood, which he gathered along riverbanks or on a beach. The photo above shows an ensemble consisting of pieces of driftwood with bright colors. 

In the course of 2020 a new item made from stacked stones was added, a contemporary interpretation of Noah's Ark, as depicted in the photo above (from Facebook).\

Visiting Dreamwoods

Visitors of the site can follow a specified trail along the artworks in the forest. It is advised to allow about two hours for a visit and make the walk in silence.

Dreamwoods is closed from November until end March and during these months Manfredo may make trips abroad, visiting family members and old friends in his hometown Duderstadt or collecting stones or driftwood from beaches or rivers all over Europe.

Documentation

* Manfredo's website Stoneart/Steinkunst/Arte in pietra
* Manfred Flucke's Facebook page
* Article (in German) on website Costa Blanca Forum, August 2013

* Article Poems in a landscape in Osho News, May 8, 2016
* Article (in English) on touristic website Toscana900 with route map
* Article (in Italian) with a large series of pictures on Valdelsa.net, March 5, 2017

Video

* Video by Start Production (8'40", YouTube, uploaded February 2014)

first published August 2017, last revised September 2023

note

¹ Italians who, each with a specific approach, collected and displayed stones:

- Luigi Lineri, El santuario dei sassi

- Pasquale Paolucci, Museo di pietras

In Spain Manfred Gnädinger's Museo has sculptures made from stacked stones found at the beach

Deva Manfredo (Manfred Flucke)

Selva di sogno (Dreamwoods)

Località San Giorgio

Chiusdino, region Toscane, Italy
open from end march until early november
for opening hours look here

Matti Järvenpää, Rautapuisto/Iron Park

photos courtesy of Minna Haveri

Matti Järvenpää's art environment in Kyröskoski, Finland, for many years has remained a hidden gem. Only recently (spring 2017) written and visual information has become available on the internet about this extensive and impressive artwork.

Life and works

Matti Järvenpää (1936-2022) already at a young age had fun in making small constructions. At adulthood he got a job at Kyrö Electric, a company designing and constructing all kinds of electrical installations. He worked there for 43 years until he retired around 2000.

Struck by the beauty of ancient objects and machinery in the agricultural business, Järvenpää made his first creation in 1967, a rocking chair. The re-use of old materials is evident, the seat of the chair for example appears to be derived from a tractor.

This was the first of a series of creations Järvenpää would produce in the years to come. His activity would result in an art environment which for one part consists of stand alone iron creations and for another part of clustered old industrial, agrarian or household objects made from (cast) iron. 

Järvenpää's art environment

The collection of some thirty iron artworks is exhibited in the green and fragrant surroundings of a pine forest near the small community of Kyröskoski, part of the larger community of Hämeenkyrö (region Pirkanmaa), some 220 north-west of Helsinki.

sunset

A special part of the collection is the series of creations made of clustered similar objects, such as the assembly in the picture above, composed from more or less uniform red and yellow lids surrounded by a radius, an assembly or clustering which as a whole expresses a sunset.

clustered insulators for overhead power cables

Järvenpää's art environment has a variety of such clustered artworks which testify to the creative ingenuity of the artist.

Such as a stack of multicolored buckets.....

...... or kind of a screen built with seats of tractors or other agricultural machines.....

.....or a collection of pancake pans and other circular items added to a wooden wall.....

.... or kettles....

........ or objects you do not recognize immediately, but which have to do with

agricultural or industrial activities in former times.......

In the field of art environments Järvenpää's method of clustering similar items in designing an artwork occurs sporadically. In Finland Juha Vanhanen clustered old plowshares, painted white, to portray a flight of birds. And in Italy Ettore Guatelli collected large quantities of old tools which he added to the walls of his house in rhythmic patterns.

In addition to the creations that constitute the art environment, Järvenpää owned a large collection of old cars, buses, billboards and the like, a collection that attracts a lot of interest from rally drivers and other lovers of old cars.

Matti Järvenpää passed away on July 19, 2022. 

It has been reported that his three sons have decided to preserve the park and continue its operations.

Documentation

* Matti Järvenpää, Kirjatalo Ekiteki, 2008 -72 p (booklet, out of stock)

* on Finnish website ITE-taide an article about Rautapuisto by Minna Haveri 

Videos

* Video by Maaseudun Sivistysliitto (YouTube, 8'01", December 2018, subtitled in English)

 

Matti Järvenpää

Rautapuisto

Kyröskoski, Hämeenkyrö, Pirkanmaa, Western and Central Finland

awaiting information about visiting the site

Pavel Andrikevich, будинок з драконом / The house with a dragon

pictures courtesy of Masha Pylypchuk

In the Ukrainian city of Lutsk since 2009 a rotatable metal installation that represents a dragon rises on the roof of a residential house. It's a creation by self-taught white-smith Pavel Andrikevich

Life and works

Born in the late 1950s Andrikevich studied at the Civil Aviation Technical School in Leningrad, Russia (from 1991 on St Petersburg).  After his study he worked as a dispatcher at the traffic service of the regional airport of the Rivne region in the north-west of Ukraine.

In the 1980s he got a job at the in 1984 newly opened Volyn regional airport, not far from the city of Lutsk, where he went to live.

Around 1986 Andrikevich became interested in working with metal. Just as other self-taught artists make sculptures or other creations from wood, it's for Andrikevich an artistic adventure to work with metal. 

In part his metalwork just delivers decorative items, for another part it results in functional products which are nice to see as well, as for example a decorated turbo vent as on the picture below.

The airport of the Volyn region, where Andrikevich worked, was successful in the 1980s, but it encountered problems following the dissolution of the USSR in December 1991. It officially closed in 1997, but Andrikevich may have lost his job earlier.

He got a new job at the TechnoModul company in Lutsk, which makes equipment for ventilation.

Next to this job Andrikevich also focused upon the manufacture of metal domes for churches, monasteries and other buildings in Lutsk and in the surrounding Volyn region. An example of such a dome is the one installed on the chapel at the site of a fire brigade in Lutsk.

A very special part of Andrikevich's metalwork is his series of decorated helmets for motorcyclists, made from shining steel and adorned with various colorful stones.

These helmets indeed are suitable to wear when driving a motor cycle, but Andrikevich rarely will do so to avoid problems with the police.

In addition to these helmets, Andrikevich's house and garden include many more metal items, such as above shield and sword, but also a swing for children, storage boxes and various other decorative items. 

However, Andrikevich's most spectacular creation is the dragon on the roof of his two story house.

The idea to construct such a creature had been with Andrikevich for a while, but it actually took shape when he had to rest for weeks due to an accidentally broken thigh. 

Made of aluminum in order not to be too heavy and resting on a base of galvanized steel, the five-meter long dragon can turn with the direction of the wind. It is flanked by decorated chimneys, crowned with pigeons.

With the help of his two sons, Andrikevich installed the creation on June 7, 2009. 

Visible from afar, it attracts a lot of public interest, as it also resulted in various articles in the local and regional press.

Documentation
* Article (April 2017) in newspaper Volyn News
* Article (March 2016) in newspaper Rayon Lutsk
* Article (January 2012) in newspaper Volyn News 
* Album The House with the Dragon in Lutsk by Masha Pylypchuk on Facebook (July 2017), with a large variety of pictures of the site

Video

* Video by Masha Pylypchuck on Facebook

Pavel Andrikevich

The house with a dragon
(name of street unknown)

Lutsk, Volyn region, Ukraine

no public visits,
the installation can be seen from the street 

Pascal Audin, Le monde de M. Audin / Mr Audin's world

all pictures (2017) courtesy of Jean François Barrat

from his weblog Zoudou artiste singulier

On the Place du Marché (market square) in Gençay, France, just behind the town hall, an old shop was transformed into an art environment named Le monde de M. Audin (Mr Audin's world).

Life and works

Born July 1, 1957 in Poitiers, Pascal Audin grew up in a family that treated him with denigration. which meant that as an adult he experienced problems in finding a place in life. Although he had jobs such as painter at a construction company and stone cutter, he also was homeless for a couple of years and for some time he was taken to a therapeutic center.

The turning point in his life came at age forty, when a friend asked him why he did not try making visual art. 

Later looking back at that moment, Audin said: 

"Ça a fait tilt dans ma tête, et depuis je peins. Je peins comme les enfants, de manière instinctive. Cela sort de mes tripes, de mon cœur" (It clicked in my head and since then I paint. I paint like children, instinctively. It is out of my guts, out of my heart) ¹.

His colorful paintings are one and all joy and bear witness to a great imagination and curiosity. 

In 2002 Audin settled in Gençay, a small town south of Poitiers in the west of France with some 1800 inhabitants. At the market place in the center of town he could rent an old, rather dilapidated shop. 

He used this shop both as his dwelling house and as his workshop. A self-taught artist, Audin produced a large quantity of all kind of artworks, such as totems, paintings and postcards. He decorated the interior and exterior walls with frescoes, installed a variety of items, such as a collection of decorated snow/christmasballs or a collection of keys added to a ceiling.... 

The artist's house became an art environment, which soon began to contribute to the identity of the town. As the painter of Gençay Audin became a central personality of the community.

He was invited to take part in various expositions and he liked to cooperate with schools in realizing large frescoes together with the school children.

An association Les amis de Monsieur Audin was formed, which in 2009 published a weblog with information about his expositions and photographs of his artworks and house.

The future of the site is assured

When in 2015 a rental period of Audi's house/museum/art environment would expire, the owner indicated his intention to sell the property.

Since this could have meant that Audin had to leave and that much of his artwork might get lost, the Association of friends became active and organized a crowdfunding action, about which newspapers reported.

In August 2015 it was announced that with € 15.000 on donations from friends and with financial support from the Communauté de Communes du Pays de Gençay and from the Région Poitou-Charente, the necessary resources were available to buy the house.

Audin left Gençay 

In November 2021 Pascal Audin left Gençay. As he said, a reason was that he wanted to protect his creations, because the roof of his house was leaking and paintings on the upper floor were starting to grow mold.

His house in Gencay was bought by a collective in 2022 to use as a place for workshops and exhibitions. The interior still contains decorations that Audin had made. 

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Audin moved to the small community of Moussac in the Vienne area, some 30 km south east of Gençay. Here he got a new studio in a former school, this in accordance with the local authorities.

From there he moved to a house in Le Bouchage, a village in the municipality of Bussière-Poitevine, where he lives with Véronique Levasseur.

Documentation

* Article C'est chez Pascal Audin (March 8, 2017) by Jean François Barrat on his weblog ZOUDOU Artiste Singulier. A translation of this text into English is available on OEE texts

* Weblog Les amis de monsieur Audin (July 2009 - February 2013)
* La Maison de Pascal Audin on Facebook

Videos

* Video in the context of the crowdfunding action  (1'41", YouTube, uploaded june 2015

* Video by newspaper La Nouvelle République (2'53", Daily Motion, uploaded April 2915)

* Trailer (on Vimeo) of a 52' film De la couleur sur les plaies (Color on wounds) to be realized by Jean-Louis Dubois-Chabart

note

¹ The quote is from an article in La Nouvelle République (29-1-2011), reprinted in facsimile on the website Les amis de  monsieur Audin

first published May 2017, last revised February 2025

Pascal Audin
Le monde de M. Audin

2002-2021 Gençay, dept Vienne, region Nouvelle-Aquitaine, France
moved in 2021 to Moussac, dept Vienne, region Nouvelle-Aquitaine, France
currently (2025) Le Bouchage, municipality of Bussière-Poitevine, region Nouvelle-Aquitaine,   , France