Emmanuel Cometto, Sculptures de bois flotté / Sculptures of driftwood

pictures (2018) courtesy of Dominique Clément

from his weblog Herault Insolite 

Mourèze is a small community of almost 200 inhabitants in the south of France, some 50 km west of Montpellier. It is known for the nearby nature reserve Cirque de Morèze. a mountainous area with high-rising rock formations.

And in the field of at environments the village is known for sculptures of driftwood, placed in public space.

Life and works

These creations were made by Emmanuel Cometto and were arranged in front of and in the vicinity of his home/studio Atmosterre, on the Place des Palabres.

Comettto was born in 1968 in the town of Thionville in the Moselle area, northern France. Initially he had jobs in a technical sphere, such as joiner, construction worker or welder in the aviation industry. But from an early age he also was someone who could live in imaginary worlds and liked making drawings, ceramics or sculptures.

In 1995, meanwhile married, he moved with his wife and a daughter from northern France to Corsica, where the family settled in  the small community of Lugo di Venaco in the center of the island. 

Venaco is not far from Corte, the former capital of the isle, where Thierry Léonelli has a well known pottery workshop. Soon Cometto got a regular job in this pottery, where he could further develop in the manufacture and glazing of ceramics.

In the summer of 2001 Cometto and his family (meanwhile also a son was born) moved to Mourèze, where Cometto installed his own home annex studio, named Atmosterre. 

From the moment he settled here, Cometto has developed into a versatile artist and carpenter of craft items.

He made remarkable technical devices (such as a shoe with a built-in radiator, a flying broom -long before Harry Potter- or a musical flying saucer), graphic work (such as business posters and illustrations for books), ceramics (such as plates and bowls, including special ones for a star restaurant in London) and wooden structures (such as large tree houses and wooden cabins, but also wooden composters, not only for household use, but also for installation in residential areas in the region, these marketed via Divesterram ). 

Creations from driftwood

A rather unique aspect of Cometto's creative activity is the collection of sculptures he made of driftwood, a way of working he started around 2015. and continued for a number of years.He finds his material along riverbanks or on the beach along the Mediterranean and, as he says, he is 

".... using it as it is, without sculpting or even cutting it ... I observe the shapes and colors and put together what goes well, a bit like a puzzle ... I harvest these woods that are precious to me in the lake or by the sea. The woods are all rounded and very solid, which gives sculptures (even large ones) the ability to stay outdoors".

These creative activities in arranging drift wood in such a way that more or less recognizable persons and animals emerge, have resulted in a large number of sculptures, small ones, but also large ones of some meters high. 

Visitors could see a guitar player, a mermaid from a chestnut root, a some meters high giraffe and all kinds of other larger and smaller animals, a little hunter from the cro-magnon era, a two meters high Masai man and woman, and so on. 

Cometto's studio, in the basement of the house, could not store such a large number, and so the sculptures found a place on the square near the house and probably in the adjacent streets.

Although the display of the sculptures in every respect resembles an art environment, it was probably not a conscious choice by Cometto to make such a spatial creation, but it rather was a practical necessity.

With regard to the qualification art environment, however, it should be noted that the sculptures are in principle intended for sale and so the collection may have a variable character in the event of items being sold.

All this makes no difference to the appreciation people who visit Morèze have for the creations; in general, they take great pleasure in viewing them.

Documentation

* Emmanuel Commeto's website
* Commeto's account on Facebook
* Entry (June 2018) by Dominique Clément on his weblog Herault Insolite, with pictures
* Article (June 2005) by Fabienne Chetrit on her weblog
* Pictures on Picuki, here, here and here
* Entries on Crapahut weblog, here and here, with pictures

Emmanuel Cometto 

sculptures from driftwood around his studio Atmosterre
4 Place des Palabres
Mourèze, dept Hérault, region Occitanie, France
sculptures can be seen on the street

Joël Bast, Présences / Presences

this picture and the next two: screenprints from a video (2017) 

by Lilian Bathelot, published here in agreement with the maker

The group of people in the photo above is not just a collection of people. On closer inspection this turns out to be a collection of sculptures assembled together as a group of spectators at some event.

These sculptures have been made by the French self-taught artist Joël Bast, who -since he began creating them- lived and worked in the midst of his creations.

Life and works

Joël Bast is the artist name of Joël Bastard (April 1951-November 2, 2021).  

On the internet almost nothing can be found about the first decades of his life. In the 1990s he was a self-taught sculptor who worked in wood and stone.

The story begins in 2000 when Bast decided to stop working in wood and stone, and to start creating life-size personalities made from hexagonal chicken mesh and papier-mâché.

Around the same time a new art festival started in the community of Banne, a small characteristic village in the southern Ardèche area. The yearly festival was entitled Bann'Art, festival d'art singulier, art d'aujourd'hui (Bann'Art, festival of singular and contemporary art).

Bast participated in this Festival with his sculptures, which he referred to as Présences. In July 2016 he was interviewed at the Festival site by Jeanine Rivais, a well known French author about singular art.

Bast owned a small, colorfully painted caravan, with which he, with a number of sculptures, could travel to art festivals. There is a report about a trip he made in 2007 to Montmartre, Paris, where he placed his sculptures on sidewalks, benches and other places in the public space, just in the midst of the passing public.

In 2009 Bast settled in the city of Séte, a port and a seaside resort on the Mediterranean in the Hérault department, where he (and his sculptures) got room in a building belonging to the municipality. 

Here he continued to work on expanding his collective of sculptures, took part in local art events and put his présences not only on his balcony along the street, but in all kinds of public places in the city.

picture via IDHeraultTV (around 2016) 

of a mermaid in Séte's harbour

In 2016, when Bast had completed some 140 sculptures of personalities, the city informed him that the building where he stayed, was needed for other purposes and he was asked to look for another place.

A petition to find a solution for Bast so he could stay in Séte, signed by some 700 inhabitants of the city, did not change the local authorities' mind and he had to look for another place for himself and his extensive collection of 140 Présences.

After some wanderings, Bast was welcomed by the mayor of the municipality of Grabels, 35 km north-east of Séte, who, in consultation with the city council, offered him living space and a workshop in the Chateau de Grabels, which was bought by the municipality in 2015.

this picture and the next two courtesy of 
Sophie Lepetit, from her weblog

The castle is surrounded by a park, where Bast found space to set up his sculptures, as the photo above shows. At the same time, the sculptures formed such a part of everyday life that they were also present in the kitchen, as can be seen in the picture below.

More about "Présences"

The French word précense reads in English presence, and refers to the situation that something or someone is in a certain place. The plural therefore relates to a number of people, or in this case sculptures, who are in a certain place or situation. With regard to Bast's creations that situation best can be indicated by "normality" or "everydayness".

Just as the material that Bast used to manufacture his sculptures is rather simple -chicken wire and papier-mâché from old newspapers- the sculptures are a collective of ordinary people engaged with their daily activities. Including young and old, male and female, all with a variety of cultural backgrounds, the collective is a model of mutual tolerance in daily practice.

Some sculptures have been part of the collective for over fifteen years and became trusted company for Bast. Some of them stayed indoors, as if they belonged to the family, a situation that can be found more often in the field of art environments, such as with Bogdan Ziętek from Poland, or Valery Ermakov from Ukraine. Some stayed in the park, or have been scattered around in the community. 

Bast wouldn't sell sculptures that were part of the collective. By exception he was willing to make a sculpture on order, but preferably the collective came first.

Joël Bast passed away on November 2, 2021

Documentation

* Website Les Présences (with a large variety of photos)

* Interview (2006) by Jeanine Rivais, published on her website

* Sylvie Veyrunes and Joel Bast, Présences, 2010 (a photo book)
* Article (2016) by Jeanine Rivais, published on her website
* Article (2017) by Fabienne Durand, published on her weblog
* Article (2017) by Virginie Moreau in Hérault Juridique et Economique
* Entries (2017)  on the weblog of Sophie Lepetit (with a series of pictures), here and here

Videos 
* Video Présence des Présences  (2'33", Vimeo, 2017) by Lilian Bathelot

* Video by Ophelia Film  (9'43", November 2013, YouTube)

Joël Bast

Les présences

Chateau de Grabels

Grabels, dept Hérault, region Occitanie, France

the park around the castle can be visited by the public

visits of the interior only on appointment

Yuri Dunaev, Памятники из железного лома / Monuments of iron scrap

 

monument marking the 180ᐤ  meridian

all pictures courtesy of Andrey Shapran ¹
(click to enlarge)

This blog understands Europe in a geographical sense and so it includes the landmass west of the Urals. However, the art environment presented here is located east of the Urals, in the extreme north-west of Arctic Russia, in the district of Chukotka, an area with a harsh climate, bisected by the 180ᐤ meridian. 

Presenting here these monuments of iron scrap that together form the art environment, is not only due to their impressive appearance, but can also be based upon the various honoring references these sculptures include to European explorers and other courageous people of both Russian and Western origin ².

Monument in honor of James Cook

  

Life and works

The iron sculptures presented here have been created by Yuri Alexandrovich Dunaev, who grew up in Tajikistan and at a young age already dreamed of becoming a pilot. He tried to enter a school for aviation to realize his dream, but could not afford the registration fee. So in Uzbekistan he did a study for air traffic controller. During his military service he was a radio-operator.

Around 1977 he became air traffic controller at Cape Schmidt airport in the Chukotka district in the far north west of Russia, a job he currently -after over forty years- still fulfills. He lives in an apartment in the small community of Ryrkaypiy, not far from the airport.

 the monument for James Cook in front of 
apartment buildings in the community of Cape Smith

When James Cook -on discovery voyage in 1778- for the first time in western history sailed past the coast of Chukotka, he named the area Cape North. 

In 1934 the area was renamed Cape Schmidt in honor of Otto Yulyevich Schmidt (1891-1956), in the Soviet Union a famous scientist and leader of expeditions, such as the North Pole expedition in 1933-1934 with the steamer Chelyuskin  (the ship crashed after being stuck in the ice for five months, after which the passengers stayed in makeshift huts, to be rescued eventually by many flights of aircraft).

In the 1980s Dunaev began making sculptures, mainly using iron scrap he collected at the local dump.  The local authorities gave him a permit to search for useful items at the dump, friends helped him to transport large material, and it also happened that he got help from the army, for example by making a crane available to install a high rising monument.

the monument "The spit of two pilots"
located near the community of Cape Smith

Over the years, Dunaev has created some twelve large-scale monuments, which are interconnected by an overarching theme, that includes remembering specific characteristics and (sometimes dramatic) events of the area of Cape Schmidt and honoring those involved in these events.

One such characteristic is that the 180ᐤ  meridian runs over land in this area. And its special that there are only two spots in the world where this meridian goes over land, namely Cape Schmidt and the Fiji Islands. Otherwise the meridian runs over the oceans.The monument was erected in September 1980 and is 12 m high. The numbers 1, 8 and 0 are executed in triplicate, each set forming a triangle, with each triangle painted in its own color, white, blue and red.

The monument for James Cook  (1728-1779), honors the British explorer who in 1778 was the first European to map the North Cape. It is three meters high and it was installed in 1998 in the community of Cape Smith, which is some six km from Ryrkaypiy, where Dunaev lives. The guns left and right, which rest on aircraft landing gear, initially could fire salvos during festivities, but because of safety that capacity has been removed.

The Spit of two pilots, installed in 1987, is a monument in honor of the American pilots Ben Eyelson en Earl Borland, who in 1929 crashed with their plane while rescuing cargo from a ship stuck in the ice. It is located near the community of Cape Smith.

The sculpture is decorated with a propeller of an airplane and an image of a flag that combines the flags of Russia and the United States. At the top of the creation an iron flame includes a bell that rings when the wind rises, a quality that can serve as a beacon for ships in fog.

Monument  Ilyushin IL 14 

The plane pictured above is an Ilyushin Il 14, in service from 1954 on in civil and military aviation. It was installed in 1991 as a Monument in honor of civil aviation  It was donated by the Ministry of Civil Aviation with thanks for Dunaev's perseverance in creating kind of a museum and preserving the memory of civil aviation. 

Monument in memory of an accident 
during an international expedition in 1993

 

The monument pictured above was created in memory of an accident during an international expedition  in Chucotka in 1993. when a helicopter with French researchers on board crashed, which resulted in the death of eight people.

Installed in 1995 the monument includes eight polished semi-precious stones behind an armored windscreen of a TU-16 plane.

Pictured below is the monument in honor of  Nils Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld  (1832-1901), who was a geologist and Arctic explorer. He was born in Finland but spent a large part of his life in Sweden. He became known from his expeditions to Greenland and Spitsbergen,1872-1873 and the expedition of 1878-1879 when he was the first to discover and sail the Northeast Passage.

Near the North Cape the ship was caught in ice that drifted away. Only later, when the ice became thinner, the ship was released.

The monument, surrounded with anchors, includes a globe that shows the continents, the various seas and the Arctic area with the trajectory of the Northern Sea Route. Nowadays, because of the changes in the climate, the northern route is a large part of the year free of ice, so it becomes more attractive for commercial shipping.

Monument in honor of Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld

  

Currently Dunayev still is considering plans to expand the acreage of monuments and he is also active in the maintenance of the current monuments.

Documentation

* Evgeny Basov, "Cape Otto Schmidt. The man who erects monuments", article (November 2017) on website Live Journal
* Odynokiy, "Autodidact sculptor from Cape Schmidt ...", article (July 2016) in Life Journal
* An article (July 2016) in Life Journal about the crash of the two American pilots in 1929, the search for their bodies and their funeral

note
¹ Andrey Shapran is a well known photographer in Russia. To get an impression of some specific aspects of the area where Dunaev's monuments are located, take a look at his series photos Cape North (2015, about living conditions in Cape North) and First Uranium (2015, about a remote penal camp (1950-1953) where prisoners worked on the extraction of uranium)

² This taking into account that characteristic sites in the Asian part of the Russian Federation are also included in this weblog in order to give a balanced and coherent picture of the entire field of Russian art environments.

Yuri Dunaev
Monuments of iron scrap
Cape Schmidt (Ryrkaypiy), Chukotka district, Russia
monuments situated in the open air

Vasily Artamonov, Скульптуры в городе / Sculptures in town

screenprint from the video in the documentation

The picture above shows some of the sculptures made by Vasily Artamonov, displayed in front of his house in Rylsk, Kursk region, Russia.

It's just a small part of the over two hundred sculptures he created since around 1995. The largest part of his oeuvre has been relocated to various places in the public space in the Kursk region.

Like François Michaud in the 19th century decorated his village Masgot with sculptures or like in

our time a collective of conscripted soldiers embellished the Russian city of Teykovo with their creations, Artamonov has the desire to brighten up the public space with his fairy-tale characters, first of all on spots in his hometown Rylsk, but in line with that also on spots in the public space in other communities in the region of Kursk.

this picture and the next two by Yuri Fedorov 

Life and works

Born in a family with six other children in the small village of Bredy in the Chelyabinsk area in the southern Urals, Artamonov studied at a school for agricultural engineering. He got a job at a farm, married and got a son. However, after a couple of years he experienced this work as too routine.

He felt more attracted to a varied, creative type of work, so he tried growing roses. This was not succesfull and he moved to the Caucasus where he worked as a driver at a small farm owned by a brother.

After his military service he noticed that he longed for the Kursk region, the residential area of his father and grandparents in the west of Russia. So he decided to go there. On the way something happened that was decisive for his further life. He saw a sculpture of a huge dragon with children happily strolling around, laughing and feeling happy.

The scene triggered him and gave him the idea  to undertake something similar. Artamonov could move into the house on Pervomaiskaya Street in Rylsk, where his grandparents and his father, all deceased, had lived before.

Here, around 1995, he made his first creation, a huge dragon. This one was followed by two bears flanking a bench, and a dinosaur. All creations were displayed on the narrow space separating the house from the roadway.

Artamonov's creative project was based upon a philosophy stating that if a whole city has such sculptures, life will be better. Embellish Rylsk with fairy tale characters and the city will shine, it will be a city of happiness and dreams........!

He invited the local authorities to (financially) support such a project, but at that moment they hesitated to make a decision. So Artamonov had to combine his creative activities with various jobs, such as cook, agronomist, driver, plumber and handyman. Currently he works as a guard and driver at the House of Creativity in Rylsk.

But making sculptures was paramount. During his career  as a self-taught artist of over twenty years Artamonov focussed especially upon creating sculptures related to Russian fairy tales, which for him are a source of joy and patriotism.

When making a sculpture Artamonov first makes a body from sturdy metal elements he welds together and shapes into the desired model. This basis is covered with wire mesh, after which the creation is finished with cement and/or plaster, applied layer after layer.

Creating a sculpture on the average takes two weeks of painstaking work. He works in the warm season, from May till October; in the other months the weather is too cold to work with cement.

Artamonov's sculptures in the streets of Rylsk (screenprint)

As Artamonov's creative activities became rather well-known in and around Rylsk, his dream came true that his work would be displayed in public space in the region.

For example, one day the mayor of the town of Kurchatov, situated some 80 km east of Rylsk, personally visited Artamonov to inform if the town could buy some sculptures. This resulted in the purchase of twenty sculptures (incidentally for a modest fee), which now are displayed at a park in Kurchatov.

Other sculptures are displayed in playgrounds, parks and kindergartens in the community of Khomutovka (50 km north of Rylsk), Koersk, the capital of the region (some 125 km east of Rylsk), in the community of Koerstsjatov (80 km east of Rylsk)  and even in the city of Belgorod in a neighbouring region (some 200 km south-east of Rylsk)

Artamonov's sculptures in the streets of Rylsk (screenprint)

Vasily Artamonov is a modest man who does not care about wealth. A smiling child, enjoying his sculptures is his greatest reward. Convinced that his sculptures can contribute to a better life in the city, he relentlessly continues his creative activities.

Documentation

* Article by Yulia Matveeva (October 2017) in the website seyminfo.ru

* Another article by Yulia Matveeva (April 2017) on the same website

* Article by Marina Krapivnaya (August 2005) on the website of regional newspaper
Drug diva druga 

Video 

* Video by TV and Radio Company Seim (2'23", YouTube, published October 2017)

Vasily Artamonov

Sculptures in town

Pervomaiskya Street (workshop)

Rylsk, Kursk region, Russia

sculptures can be seen in town and in front of Artananov's house/workshop

Collective of conscripts, Sculptures for Teykovo

pictures from a post by 
Rovenko in liveinternet.ru (2010)

 Approaching the Russian city Teykovo around 2010, one could come across a set-up of some five wooden sculptures made in a naive style, a set not installed to regulate traffic, but to beautify the town.

It looks somewhat like Charles Pecqueur's decorated roundabout in Ruitz, France: a set of sculptures meant to beautify his hometown, however in his case also with a traffic regulating character.

Teykovo is city of around 35.000 inhabitants, located some 300 km north-east of Moscow. From old a town with textile industry, it currently houses the strategic missile division of the Russian army.

The idea of doing a project to the benefit of the town -and especially its children- around 2010 originated in the leadership of the military garrison. 

The project would include the construction of playgrounds. These sites as well as many other spots of the town would be embellished with sculptures, all with the deployment of the creative skills of young conscripts. 

And then these playgrounds and sculptures were realized indeed.

The pictures above and below show some playgrounds (as around 2010). The picture below has partly dugged in multicolored vehicle tires and a variety of sculptures, including Sponge Bob.

Other playgrounds are surrounded by partly dugged-in tree trunks, as in the picture below.

  

The most surprising aspect of the project is the large number of stand-alone mainly wooden sculptures. It's truly an open air festival of naive/outsider art.

The three-headed character below is just one example of the numerous sculptures created in the context of this project.

In general most sculptures are more conventional than the one above. They portray all kinds of animals, such as elephants, rabbits, pigs, snails and giraffes, children's favorites such as Spongebob and Humpty Dumpty and a variety of (mainly) male characters such as a policeman, a knight, a Don Quichotte and a soldier.

Documentation

The internet has a number of (Russian) websites that show these sculptures, mainly as they were in the early 2010s, for example:

* Website RussiaTrek, December 2009, series of 15 photos of stand alone sculptures

* Michelleka on Live Net.ru, October 2011, 78 photo's, with explanatory text

(These pictures have been re-published on the Facebook page Outsider Art february 2014)

Actual situation

To my knowledge there are no recent (Russian) websites with information about the actual (November 2016) situation of this large series of sculptures, a scattered art environment, in Teykovo.

Collective of conscripts

Sculptures for the city

Teykovo, Ivanov region, Russian Federation

if still extant, sculptures are visible in public space

François Michaud, Masgot, Village avec sculptures / Village with sculptures

this picture and the next one 
courtesy of maisonburke (Flickr, July 2007)

Masgot, a small community in the department Creuse in the south of France, has become famous because of a very special creative talent of one of its former inhabitants.

Life and works

François Michaud (1810-1890), who all his life lived in Masgot, at some moment manifested himself as a self-taught sculptor.

Not much is known about his life. His father was a mason, Michaud himself a farmer. He married at age 19 and the couple had four children.

From around 1850 until around 1880 Michaud made sculptures in granitic stone which he displayed at various locations throughout the village. In this way the community was transformed into a large scale 19th century art environment with some fifty sculptures depicting all kinds of people and animals. 

It is quite possible that for many decades the villagers did not consider it special that their village was decorated with such a lot of sculptures, and indeed in the course of the years these creations became neglected and got covered with vegetation.

Revaluation in the 1980's

However in the early 1980s Daniel Delprato, mayor of Fransèches (of which Masgot is part) and also a professor in the crafts of building, remarked the particularity of Michaud's creations and began working with Masgot's inhabitants to clean and if necessary restore the sculptures.

When this resulted  in TV-crews visiting the village and newspapers publishing articles, the inhabitants must have realized the significance of Michaud's work.

So, in 1987 the association Les amis de la Pierre de Masgot was formed. Their website (in French) has a lot of information about Michaud and it presents various ways to discover the sculptures (simple map, audio, illustrated booklet)

Masgot currently has a visitors center where tourists can get information and in summertime various activities are organised, like lectures, guided visits, but also weekly courses in sculpting in stone.

Documentation
* Website of the association of friends
* A collection of pictures (2013) of the sculptures by Julia Sisi and Dan Casado on Sisi's FB page
* A series of pictures (2021) of the sculptures on the weblog of Sophie Lepetit

Videos

Video by Videoguide Nouvelle-Acquitaine (2023, YouTube, 3'55")

   >

* Video by Mimsy L. showing the sculptures (August 2010, 4'56", You Tube)

 

* Video by France 3 TV (February 2020, YouTube, 3'32") 

first published March 2009, last revised April 2023

François Michaud

Masgot, village with sculptures

23480 Fransèches, dept Creuse, region Nouvelle Aquitaine, France

visitors are welcome