Leena Nio, Kimara mosaiikkinäyttely / Kimara mosaic exhibition

pictures courtesy of Raya Kalioinen, MSL

Jokela is a community with about 6,000 inhabitants, part of the Finnish municipality of Tuusula, located about 50 km north of Helsinki.

Life and works

Leena Nio was born in Jokela in 1963. 

She already showed artistic talent as a young girl when she became a winner in a drawing competition for children.  And as a high school student she won a prize in a photo-taking competition that included a three-week trip to Canada.

In 1979 and 1980 she spent a year in the United States as part of a student exchange program. In that context, she also learned to speak English well.

Leena apparently enjoyed traveling, because she subsequently spent a few summers in Germany and then moved to Paris, where she stayed for eight years and taught English.

In 2004, still living in Paris, she had an experience that was of great significance for the rest of her life: 

her dormant passion for making mosaic was sparked.

There is a story that says that when entering a small Parisian art shop, she realized that this was the world that actually suited her. Leena herself said in a publication that she was triggered by an article about the French mosaic artist Virginie Loÿ.

Either way, the experience led her to decide to return to Finland to work there as a non-professional mosaic maker.

She was welcome to return to the home of her parents, who meanwhile had retired and who enjoyed having her around in the house that was large enough to provide her with not only shelter, but also a place to work as an artist. 

Moreover, the house was located in a rural area slightly outside the built-up area of Jokela and there was sufficient green space to install any larger creations.

The photos in this post show that this space has been gratefully used indeed. 

From the moment Leena Nio started making mosaics, a colorful exhibition of mosaics with a wide variety of attractive works came about in the green area around the house.

Circular signs with mosaic, mounted on small posts, decorate a lawn near the house in a special way, as shown in the image above, while as in the image below, the wall of a shed near the house is decorated with mosaic on a surface in all kinds of shapes,

Nowadays there is also a 500 meter long walking path available, along which mosaic creations are displayed.

Documentation

* Website of MSL with info about openings dates and hours in 2024

* Website of Middle of Nowhere with a variety of pictures and a page about the Art Trail

* Website by Leena Nio, with an extensive presentation of her mosaics and some personal notes

* Facebook

Videos

 * Video (December 2023, YouTube, 0.59) by Middle of Nowhere

* Video (September 2023, YouTube, 1'27") by Maaseudun Sivistysliitto (MSL)

Leena Nio

Kimara mosaic exhibition

Tiensuuntie 112

Jokela, part of Tuusula, dept Uusimaa, region Southern-Finland, Finland

can be visited, see this website for opening hours

Google Streetview, with a series of photos of the site

Nicola di Cesare, Giardino Roccioso / Rock Garden

images are screenprints from the two videos in the documentation

In 1981 Nicola di Cesare started to create an art environment in the Italian town of Grosio, a municipality with about 4800 inhabitants in the far north of Italy, near it's border with Switzerland.

The creation has risen on a mountainside, located behind di Cesare's house and is generally referred to as Giardino Roccioso (Rock Garden)

view on the Rock Garden from below

Life and works

Nicola di Cesare was born in 1950 in Pizzoferrato, a municipality in central Italy. 

After primary school he had various jobs, including one with a marquise, who had a summer residence in Grosio. Every summer he travelled to that place in the north to do all kinds of chores. He also worked in Switzerland as a cook and a railway worker.

view from the Rock Garden on Grosio

In a shop in Grozio in the 1970s he met Domenica Lucia. They fell in love, married and settled in a house along the northern edge of Grosio near the slope of a mountain in the Rhaetian Alps.

In 1981, behind his house, at the spot where the slope begins, he built a small wall which he decorated with mosaics. This was the  start of a project he is still working on in 2023, when this article is published,.

Because he is a modest man, di Cesare did not give the project a name, he even avoided this. Currently, the name Giardino Roccioso (Rock Garden) is quite commonly used.

In the publicity surrounding this art environment, di Cesare is also referred to as the Gaudi of Grosio, but it may be noted that di Cesare was not familiar with Gaudi's work and -apart from his few jobs in nearby Switzerland- he had never traveled abroad.

Like so many non-professional artists who have created an art environment, Nicola di Cesaree had no prior plan. When the wall with mosaic near his house was ready, as if it were the most natural thing to do, he began to transform the mountainside behind the house with all kinds of creations. 

This included the arrangement of a number of structural provisions, such as stairs that lead upwards and paths to walk past the decorative items.. 

The images above show how beautifully those stairs (with a total of 207 steps) are integrated into the whole of decorations applied to the slope of the mountain.

These paths and stairs lead along another architectural element that characterizes this art environment. Niches have been made in the mountain wall in which decorative elements have been incorporated, mostly pots of considerable size, made by di Cesare himself or found on the site of the municipal waste processing.

As an aside, it may be noted that di Cesare had a good relationship with the local waste management staff. They kept all kinds of items that might come in handy in the art environment and di Cesare was rather happy about that.

The images above give an impression of the fencing along the paths, which often have a creative look and feature arrangements of pots and colorful decorations.

It should be noted that these gates are not in place in all areas and that in comments on tourist websites visitors are advised to hold children's hands during a visit. Municipal authorities have also expressed their concern about the level of protection for visitors. 

A sign at the entrance to the site reminds those visitors of their own responsibility in this regard.

example of a mosaic creation

In addition to decoration with all kinds of items found on the landfill, such as vases, old ceramic plates and mirrors, in particular the multicolored mosaics added by di Cesare on the rock wall emphasize the creative character of this art environment. 

These mosaic creations often consist of small pieces of stone, which are pushed into a layer of cement in the shape of the intended image.

An image of the heart has been applied in many places in the mosaics, perhaps an expression of the feeling that predominates with di Cesare when creating the site. He also does this by applying all kinds of inscriptions that reflect his feelings. as well as by adding various dates that indicate when a certain part of the decorations was ready.

Although the creation of this art environment has been underway since 1981 and a large part had already been realized around the turn of the century, the site did not gain publicity until the early 2020s, particularly after the COVID period. 

In the first months of 2023, numerous messages about the art environment appeared on the internet. Some more substantive articles, published in these months,  have been selected in the documentation below. 

The videos in the documentation also date from the first months of 2023.

Documentation

* Article by Sabino Maria Frassa (September 2022) on website Linkiesta

* Article by Romina Vinci (June 2023) on website Spazio 50

* On Facebook a group about Grosio with on April 21, 2019, a large series of photos by Pim Stefano

* Article by Giada Carraro on het website Bric-a-Brac Italia

Videos

* Video (8'44", YouTube, April 2023) from the series of travelogues by Beatrice and Stefano

* Video (7'29", YouTube, May 2023) by Tele Paolo67 

 

Nicola di Cesare

Giardino Roccioso

via Rovaschiera

Grosio, Lombardia, Italia

visitors welcome

Google Maps with more than 1500 photos

Agnès et Nicholas Brückin, Structures en pierre du jardin des Sambucs / Stone structures of the Sambucs garden

all pictures (May 2021) courtesy of
Claire Schneider

Located on a slope in a valley in the Cévennes National Park in the south of France, surrounded by tree-filled hills and enriched with creative stone structures, the Jardin des Sambucs is not only an attractive garden with flowers, ponds and nice trails, but it's also an art environment worth visiting. 

The name of the site is Occitan for the plant scientifically named Sambucus, in English commonly referred to as elderberry.

In the context of the development of the garden in general, this post will focus in particular on the stone structures and other creations that give the site such a special character.

Creating the garden started in 1994

A young couple, Agnès and Nicholas Brückin, started in 1994 with the creation of the 5000 hectare garden. After eight years, in 2002, the site was opened for the public. Currently the garden, which has many attractive aspects, has become a beloved spot to visit.

Agnès comes from the Cévennes. She is a farmer's daughter and is self-taught when it comes to gardening. In her design of the garden she follows the concept of the moving garden, an approach by the gardener Gilles Clément to grow plants in a natural way from fallow land. This approach includes that the gardener knows the properties of different plants and understands species and their behaviors, this in order to better exploit their natural capacities.

Nicholas grew up in England, Germany and Switzerland. He worked as a machinist on a road roller in the construction and maintenance of roads made of pebbles. 

From his grandfather he inherited a special sensitivity to stones and fossils and he is particularly interested in the structure of the garden, which he wants to accentuate with stone structures, often in the form of towering structures, but also in other forms, such as half or double spheres, walls and sets of steps. With regard to producing artworks he is also self-taught.

A variety of towering stone structures

In particular when seen from a little further away from the garden, a number of  high rising towering creations, as depicted in the images above, form a distinctly defining element of the site.

These creations are made of white and sand colored pebbles, joined with cement in horizontal circles, stacked in such a way as to form tapering towers. 

These high-rising structures may be capped at the top with a small number of gray tinted stacked stones. But here are also smaller tower-like structures, as in the two images above left and right, which are capped with brown vase-shaped structures. 

Or, as in the images above and below, these smaller towery structures have blue or brown saucer-shaped structures in which stone birds can nest and amusing characters make a dance or otherwise demand attention.

It appears that these tower-like creations, also the high-rising ones, have exclusively been made with pebbles and no supporting internal infrastructure has been used. 

This also applies to a number of creations, not depicted here,  that are formed exclusively by stacking mostly gray-colored stones.

The sturdiness of the structures, especially the towering ones, testifies to the craftsmanship with which Nicholas made the creations.

Other stone-built structures

The garden also has a variety of other stone-built structures.

For example, the image above shows a spherical structure made of stacked stones, a kind of cave that can be entered by visitors and in which they eventually can retreat for a while to absorb in all tranquility the impressions of the garden.

There is also a spot in the garden that refers to Venus. It's a spot with two man-sized vertically standing shells facing each other. Venus, a goddess of classical antiquity, was born from seafoam and reached shore sailing on a large shell, later named after her as the Venus shell.

And then there are benches available for visitors to rest or muse for a while. These benches, often quite large in size, are made of stones and pebbles and equipped with colorful and comfortable cushions.

Also within the site's grounds is a structure that includes a number of shelves filled with books that visitors may consult. The walls of this library have been decorated with mosaics.

Other walls in the garden also feature mosaic decorations, often in bold colours.

The garden has a small café. There also is a restaurant where (by appointment) meals are served, made from products from the garden.

Those visitors who want to stay longer in the area can stay overnight in a guest house or in a gite, 

The owners of the garden have signed the European Charter for Sustainable Tourism and they are members of the Ecotourism Association of the Cévennes. The garden is recommended by the National Park of the Cévennes and in 2013 it received an award as "favorite of the year" from the French association of  garden journalists.

In 2020, like most musea and other public facilities in France, the garden was closed to the public. During the closure, various new elements were added to the garden. The site reopened to the public in May 2021. 

An exhibition of works by visual artist Alain Kieffer was also opened at that time

Documentation

* Website of the Jardin des Sambucs (also available in English)

* Facebook page of the garden

* On Google Maps a large series of pictures of the creations, including an number of small-scale items

* Website French Gardens (in English). Most websites that review the site have a touristic approach.  

Video

* Video by Christian Segonne (2010, 4'52"); embedding the video here has been disabled by the owner, so take a look at YouTube)

Agnès et Nicholas Brückin

Jardin des Sambucs

Hameau Le Villaret

30570 Saint André de Majencoules, dept Gard, region Occitanie, France

can be visited, see the website of the garden for info about opening hours etc

Les Guallino, Jardin des plus de deux milles coeurs / Garden of more than two thousand hearts

all pictures courtesy of Sophie Lepetit, 
from her weblog

Referred to by the locals as Les Guallino, the couple Anne Poiré and Patrick Guallino has enriched the French municipality of Belmont de la Loire with an art environment that features the bright site of life.

Life and works

Patrick Guallino was born on May 10, 1943 in Uzès. Later he would live in Cannes

At a young age he became interested in visual art and at the age of fourteen he was already working with oil paint and chalk. 

a colorful character in the garden

He continued to do so until at age 25 he was upset by the Paris student revolt, May 1968, and he destroyed or burned all of his work, except a few paintings kept by his mother.. 

It was not until more than ten years later, in 1982, that he resumed the visual arts. He was and remained a non-professional artist without any art education.

In the meantime he was married and had two children.

mosaïque du tapis aux pierres précieuses (2011)

(gemstone carpet mosaic)

Anne Poire was born on September 10, 1965 in Thionville. From an early age she was fascinated by literature and music.

In 1983 she met Patrick and a close relationship developed, that would determine their further life. 

Anne said about this:  

When I met Patrick, painter, sculptor -I am more of a woman of words, rhythms, music and vocabulary- his studio immediately seduced me. And the man.  

I arrived in his small village, and we have never left each other: since then, acrylic, vowels, pastel, consonants, ink intermingle.

 Anne and Patrick got married and in 1990 they settled in Belmont de la Loire to live in a former tissue factory. Belmont is a small community of some 1500 inhabitants, located in a rural setting, north-west of Lyon.

Anne and Patrick in front of some of the  
architectures in their garden

They set up a space of the former factory as a studio and engaged themselves both personally and as a couple with artistic activities. 

Anne Poiré would mainly focus on the literary craft and publish a large series of books (an overview of the book covers can be found on her weblog). Patrick Guallino focused on visual art, initially creating small sculptures, later working on paintings (here is an overview of the development of his work).

an example of a decoration

Before moving on to an overview of the art environment created by the couple, two special events marking their artistic career should be mentioned.

First, on July 30, 2010 on the Place de la Fontaine in the center of Belmont de la Loire an artwork made by Les Guallino was unveiled. It is a screen made from polychrome aluminum, resting on a reconstituted stone base, with a size of 3x3 meters, entitled Amour toujours (Love always).

The other event is of a completely different order, but from an artistic perspective just as interesting. 

In the course of 2016, the couple began to paint umbrellas and put them up for sale. Given the responses published on their weblog, these parapluies de bonheur became a succes indeed. Customers made photos of the umbrellas in various situations, such as on holidays, in front of towers or shops, but also in combination with street art. Wearable art, indeed. 

view of the site through an opening in a wall

Creating an art environment

In 1998 the studio was expanded and soon after that through their joint effort, the outdoor space of Anne and Patrick's residence gradually was transformed into an art environment, a development which is still going on today (2020).

With this creation the couple wants to convey cordiality and happiness, generally speaking they want to present a sunny, joyful outlook on life.

The site includes a garden area with ponds and a number of paths, flanked by an assembly of various several meters high built structures, all parts provided with in general small-scale, colorful decorations.

There are just a few separate sculptures of people or animals -like there is a human character made from stacked stones-. so this site isn't a sculpture garden. However, some parts of the surface of the site have been provided with small-scale boulders or rock formations.

a view of some architectures in the garden

The decorations are mostly of an elementary nature. 

For example, the shape of a human being may be portrayed with a circle as head, a vertical line or triangle for the body and four outward reaching lines as arms and legs. Decorations of this type, or more elaborate variations of it, can be seen on various walls and other places in the site.

Other decorations with a human character, such as faces, are also simple in shape, although no less appealing, as in the picture below.

a series of faces

The paths and other parts of the site lying on the ground, are elaborately decorated with mosaics. An example of this can be seen in the video in the documentation called La mosaique de bonheur (Mosaic of happiness), made in 2011.

The video has images of celestial bodies, with suns depicted as red circles, houses consisting of a red square capped with a red triangle, and there is a multitude of hearts in all kinds of primary colors,  all this interspersed with a few loose pieces of rock. 

Another path, named Le chemin de l'espoir  (Path of hope) has been decorated with trees, probably trees of life, and a third path Le chemin de la vérité et de la vie (Path of truth and life) has been covered with oval mosaics (pictures here)

the pond covered with bamboo sticks 

The site has a round pond, which is covered with a number of decorated bamboo sticks, this in order to protect the fish in the pond from foraging herons.

About the architectures

Regarding the architectures set up in the site, the images in the previous section of this post already give a first impression.

It can be seen that all these constructions are provided with decorations, both in the form of depictions applied on and in the walls, as well as items situated on top of the structures, such as ornamental creations or assemblies of coarse-meshed grid embellished with small colorful items

enclosing wall with decorated panels

.

A specific example of a decorated built structure is the above pictured wall that encloses the site.

This far-stretching wall comprises a large number of panels, each of which is individually provided with wall drawings, as in the picture below.

some decorated panels

One of the panels in the wall refers to Venice with depictions of a gondola, a slender tower and the church on the San Marco Square.

tower with a bench

Above picture depicts a towery structure equipped with a (stone) bench. Sitting on the bench one can enjoy a pond, which is located in front of the tower.

The site also has a Tour de Solstice (Solstice Tower), that emerges on a circular surface of cement, inlaid with mosaic decorations. which was created in summer 2020. 

two dragons crown the top of the cave (2014)

There is also a cave in the garden, formed by a semicircular open structure sunk into a wall, as partly can be seen in above picture. This cave is named Grotte des amours, des fées et des secrets (Cave of loves, fairies and secrets) and was created in 2010.

The top of the cave is decorated with a colorful sculpture. The bulging semicircular rear of this cave is richly decorated.

sculptures around a pond;
in the background a sculpted gate

Apart from the large pond covered with bamboo sticks, mentioned more above, there is a another, smaller pond, surrounded by multicolored candle-holder-like creations.

In the background there is a sculpted gate, crowned with a sculpture of a friendly smiling two-headed character.

decorations on top of the sculpted gate

Near the small pond and the sculpted gate, a new structure has been built, called the Cabane des énergies (Energy cabin), a functional equipment transformed into an artwork with a gable roof, multicolored strips across the left and right sides of the roof and a ridge decorated with small creations.

No photo of this cabin is available here, but on a page in the joint weblog of the couple photos can be seen of the cabin, as well as from front- and backside of the cave, from the gate with the double-headed character and from the candle-holder shaped creations.

a stained glass wall
(on top of an old wall dating back to the 12th century

Finally, here above is an image of a stained glass wall, which has some resemblance to the sculpture unveiled in the center of Belmont de la Loire. This creation rests on a wall that dates back to the 12th century.

The overview given here of the art environment gives a broad outline of what the site contains in terms of creations. It is good to realize that there are also many small parts and decorations, which have to  remain unmentioned here, but which each in their own way contribute to the artistic richness of the site as a whole.

Documentation

* Weblog by Anne Poiré (with an overview of books she published)

* Weblog by Patrick Guallino

* Joint weblog of Anne and Patrick

* A review of Patrick Guallino's artwork (on pdf) by Ambre Davini

* Three entries on the weblog of Sophie Lepetit (august 2019), with a large series of photos

* Wikipedia with a list of expositions and a bibliography

Videos

* An early video (YouTube, november 2011, 1'08") shows Patrick engaged in creating a mosaic

* Video La mosaique de bonheur by Les Guallino (YouTube, 2011, 5'52") 

Anne Poiré/Patrick Guallino

Jardin de plus de deux milles coeurs

192, Chemin de Batty

42670 Belmont de la Loire, dept Loire, region Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, France

the site is not open to the public,

occasionaly there are guided visits (see weblog)

Maurice Lellouche, Le petit musée / The small museum

 part of Lellouche's "Petit Musée" as in 1989

picture by Bruno Montpied, from his weblog

Champigny-sur-Marne, a municipality with around 78.000 inhabitants, is a suburb of Paris located south-east of the capital. In the 1970s/80s this community was home to an art environment, that now (2020) is in disrepair, with probably only a few remnants remaining.

The site was located at the Rue Diderot and its creator Marcel Lellouche (born in 1908), had designated it as Le Petit Musée (the small museum).

When in May 2018 Google Streetview drove past the Rue Diderot, this yielded below image of the entrance of the Petit Musée: a concrete wall with closed corrugated iron doors, located in the middle of urban high-rise buildings.

The concrete wall appears to be provided with a (difficult to recognize) decoration and with some effort the text Le petit musée can be distinguished

Behind the corrugated iron doors there is an elongated plot of land, divided into a courtyard at the front where meanwhile a large tree has sprouted and a rear part with a house where Lellouche lived. 

Life and works

Lellouche in his working life was a retailer in fruit and vegetables. 

He probably used the elongated plot of land as a space for the storage of his merchandise and as a place to park his van and other utensils that he needed to carry out his trade as a retailer and market merchant.

this picture and the next five courtesy of ©️Francis David;

from the website Habitants Paysagistes (Lille Art Museum)

Retired in 1970, when he was in his early sixties, Lellouche began transforming the site into an art environment. 

This art environment can broadly be characterized by three elements: 

- a variety of mosaics from small stones attached to the walls,

- freestanding, mostly mosaic structures and  

- a number of texts added to the walls.

The picture above shows Lellouche in front of some of his wall decorations, such as flowers in vases and a sailing ship, these combined with some fragments of texts. 

The site included a number of comparable wall decorations, such as depictions of a soldier and various African characters.

Another wall decoration can be seen on the right of above picture, where the blue, white and red of the French flag is depicted in combination with an inscription reading Dieu protège la France (God protects France).

The left part of the image shows an arch of honor constructed by Lellouche, presumably in honor of the lady whose name, Marie-Genevieve, is on the arch but about whom no further information is available.

On top of the arch there are four letters that together form the sign მ  I მ  I . It's not clear what this means. One could interpret this as DIDI, but then again it is not clear to whom this refers

It is also tempting to interpret the combination of letters as GIGI, since elsewhere in this art environment an inscription to a a circular wall has this word. As shown in the picture above, the inscription says Heureux anniversaire à notre chére roman Gigi Les Bêtes (Happy birthday to our dear novel Gigi Les Bêtes). 

Gigi is a famous book (1944) by French author Colette (1873-1954), a book that was not only adapted into a play, but also into two films and a musical. She also wrote two books with Bêtes in the title.

On the wall depicted in above picture, the name Claudie has been added. It's unclear to whom this refers. 

However, there is more clarity about the ship that is also depicted. This must be a replica of the SS France, with its 316 meter the longest ship in the world at its time, built on a yard in Saint-Nazaire and put into service in February 1962.

This replica is one of the freestanding creations of this art environment.

Another freestanding mosaic creation is the large owl, as in above picture.

Other freestanding items that decorated the site included a some three meter high replica of a windmill and a horse pulling a hearse.

To conclude this overview of the creations in Lellouche's art environment, let's quote some of the texts he added to the walls. 

There is a text that reads On est pas des pneus, mais il faut que l'on crève quand même (We are not tires, but we have to die anyway).  

Another one,  partially visible in the picture with Lellouche standing in front of a sailing ship, says "Quinou" Je les offre á Maman et a ma chère mémé  ("Quinou" I offer these  to Mom and to my dear Grandma)

And finally, depicted in the picture above, there is a quote at the top of an otherwise empty piece of wall rising above a planter with green plants, which says: Ici le decor est beau, mais l'ennui est grand  (The decor here is beautiful, but the boredom is great). 

It's a sigh that may say something about Lellouche's state of mind. He was a tormented person indeed, and when receiving visitors he could sometimes confuse them.

Lellouche continued to work on the decorations until around 1989, when he was in his early 80s. 

It is not known when he died.

The site has been almost completely lost

Nowadays hardly anything has remained of this art environment. The free-standing structures have disappeared, just as the arch with the inscription Marie-Genevieve. There are just some remnants of the bas-reliefs and the inscriptions on the wall, although very damaged,

Documentation

* The site has a review in Bruno Montpied's extensive inventory of French art environments Le gazouillis des éléphants, Paris (Ed. du Sandre), 2017. -926 p

* Short review and a series of photos by Francis  David on the website Habitants-Paysagistes (Lille Art Museum)

* Article by Sonia Terhzaz, reporting the visits she paid to the site in 2014 and 2022, on her website Cartographie des Rocamberlus  (2023), with photos of remaining creations

first published November 2020, last revised April 2023

Maurice Lellouche

Le petit musée

63 rue Diderot 

Champigny-sur-Marne, dept Val-de-Marne, region Île-de-France, France

the site is in decay, no visits