First Day A L'Ecole (Monday)

Today I visited the art school here for the first time. The building is incredibly grand, it is a square building built around a court yard. I met the Erasmus coordinator who was very sweet and spoke little bits of english to me every time I looked confused (which by that merit was possibly few minutes)! He asked me whether Wimbledon was a big or small uni, I said small/the same size as Toulouse uni?/ Yes maybe, I'm not sure./ How many floors does it have?/ 2. /We have 3. This made me smile!

I also met the course director who was very nice though very adamant that I was following their course not the wimbledon one! Hmmm... On verra..

Before tomorrow I have to pick 'mes options' the lessons that I'm going to be following for the rest of the term, I must pick a minimum of two. It's very exciting, they look really interesting, tho also rather intellectual which might be a bit beyond my limited french abilities at the moment! It looks really different to the wimbledon curriculum but so exciting, I'm looking forward to trying perhaps something new, but also learning about something I already know a bit about in French will be really useful for learning arty vocabulary! Argh I still haven't decided! Tomorrow I also get my studio space and  a tour of the school! So far I have met one other student who is on an exchange from Germany.

Having got there very early (10 o'clock this morning!) I was done in half an hour or something like that so I headed to a nearby cafe where I sat outside despite the relative cold of the morning and had  cup of tea while trying to understand my course handbook. I also did a bit of sketching, which was good for me though I can't decide whether or not I am happy with the result. It feels weird at the moment because in some ways there is subject matter all around me and yet in others I'm not sure what the  lessons at the ecole wil be like and what direction my work might take as a result, also I like working from photos but at the moment je ne sais pas because I haven't got any of the ones I've taken developed, maybe I will try to work from memory but at the moment I really don't know. I know what sort of work I want to make but weirdly i am unsure-ish of the subject matter!

I enjoy the cafe culture in France and how you can almost spend a whole day sitting in a nice cafe and watching the world go by. I spent well over and hour in that cafe and by the time I was finished I wandered the streets in search of another cafe in which I could eat lunch! Aaah.... :) I'm not sure if it will last but pretty much most of my money is going on food and hot drinks at the moment.

I spent some more time wandering the streets this afternoon, found a lovely stationary shop with lots of nice paper and choses comme ca. I wandered to the other side of the river for the first time crossing the pont neuf! Was going to go to a photographer's gallery but it was closed today! (not unusual for France, so much is closed on a Monday! It's so strange, I guess the french way to deal with Mondays is to just try and avoid it completely!) Anyway I did manage to wander down towards St Cyprian and I visited the Centre D'affiches a gallery that specialises in posters, graphic art and illustration. Today there was an exhibition of adverts on posters by an artist called Villemot, the best ones were very crisp screen prints which were very pleasing to study.

 Above, one of my favourite posters from the exhibtion.

Below, another example of Villemot's striking imagery, with crisp forms and a very effective use of colours.

 The presentation left a bit to be desired and some of the posters seemed to be wrinkly in their frames, however they were originals and as posters maybe this presentation was just true to their original intentions and display... I don't know, but the work was good, I particularly enjoyed the oringina posters! Maybe I will go back to the museum and see if they had any copies for sale. The colours and the designs were of very high quality.

After this I visited the Espace Saint-Cyprien an arts space comprising of a theatre and a bar and an art gallery and I think possibly other elements aswell. There I saw an exhibition by the artist Chantal Tomas, called (and I am translating this to English) Materialising Emotion, containing sculptures of people, crouched, huddled, defensive and in repose.

Appearing both unsettling when you met there gaze and calming when posed in serenity. Most were placed inside of or on top of open fronted wooden crates. Entering into the second room you were confronted by a large tower of crates with one serene figure on top, it took a second viewing to realise that eerily there were numerous figures resting inside tower.

              

Appearing both unsettling when you met there gaze and calming when posed in serenity. Most were placed inside of or on top of open fronted wooden crates. Entering into the second room you were confronted by a large tower of crates with one serene figure on top, it took a second viewing to realise that eerily there were numerous figures resting inside the crate tower. The exhibiton was powerful, the figures were confrontational and yet due to a small scale you could go right up to them peer all around them and study their form.

I enjoyed the textural quality which they possesed, the clay had been manipulated in a way that was refined in terms of them being very traditional style sculpture and yet also being demonstrative of the roughness with which the clay could be shaped.








I enjoyed both of these exhibitons and I hope to find even better exhibitions as I discover more of what Toulouse has to offer.