France Archives – HIGH ON HOOKING

Statues in Bordeaux. — This…giant head is called **“Sanna”** and was created by Catalan artist **Jaume Plensa**. It’s in **la Place de la Comédie** in Bordeaux. Very cool.

Back to Bordeaux for another week and talking cool statues and sculpture.

Whether you hook rugs or draw or paint or in any way create “stuff,” you’re always on the lookout for other art that just might provide you with some inspiration. At least you should be. In theory. And given that we’re all carrying automatic copying machines around with us (in the form of our phones), there’s really no excuse for not making “graven images” of the things that call to us.

Okay, I admit that I often forget to jot down the artist info or even the name of some of the artworks I see when I’m out and about, but not in a museum or gallery with an identification sign conveniently placed near the object. I had to Google “large head sculpture in Bordeaux” to find out the info above. Enjoy!

That first night walking about the city, we came across the “Monument aux Girondins,” a monument/fountain created to memorialize the local heroes of the French Revolution. The various scenes portrayed seemed almost real in the dark and jet lag after traveling so many hours to get there.

Bordeaux statues. — Why, yes, I do see you pondering what this will mean for our future. Do you think that their wardrobes will contain something we can wear? I mean, better than these bedsheets.

Sorry, sorry! It was the jet lag like I said.

Meanwhile back to real life. These guys were in l’Eglise Collegiale de Saint-Emilion. It’s still a working church though not a monastery any more. Interesting fact we learned: Sincethe Revolution, the Catholic Church no longer owns any of the churches and other buildings in France. It only uses and administers them. Because of such dwindling attendance at Masses in the last decades, the churches do not receive much in the way of collections and support for these marvelous buildings. It’s up to the cities and government to take care of them. It also explains why you can roam at will through them; they are truly tourist sites.

Statues in Saint-Emilion church. — These guys were in the Eglise Collegiale de Saint-Emilion. Never saw anything like them in any of the Catholic churches that I’ve belonged to.

And then there were the carvings in the wall of a wine cellar beneath the medieval village of Saint-Emilion. Who knows when they happened or who made them?

Not Bordeaux statues. — Oops! Sorry about that, Tom. You’re definitely NOT one of the statues, especially carrying those two bottles of wine we purchased.

Bordeaux statue. — Okay, this is my most favorite image of the whole trip. I’m assuming it’s **Dionysus**. I will hook this rug! And I promise that purple will fit in with him somehow.

Bordeaux sculptures. — I shall peel these grapes for you, mon cher. Mais bien sûr, we must have another glass of wine.

Okay, okay, I’ll stop now. Instead we’ll leave the statues and the trip behind for this week and head back into reality…

Tynan (dog) with hooked rug — Tynan brings you this week’s “what’s on the frame.” Hm, looks very primitive doesn’t it? Not like what I usually hook. And yet, and yet… More next week!

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Bordeaux river cruise — This is a bridge in Bordeaux, clearly an OLD bridge. I include it under the NATURE category, because the Garonne River is a tidal river. For our boat to go under that bridge, the captain had to have exquisite timing. At low tide.

If you’re a regular reader, then you know that Tom and I took our first really GOOD vacation in ten years in early August. No kid, not even the dog. (Don’t feel bad for Tynan; he had himself a fine time at a guild mate’s “doggie spa.”) Amazingly, neither of us had even been on a plane in five years – when we were scouting out Albuquerque before our move here in 2015. If you consider that this year we celebrated 25 years of marriage, you can see why it was time. So, we headed to Bordeaux, yes, the one in France, and boarded a Viking long boat for a wine cruise. And, yes, it met every expectation that we had.

Boat in Bordeaux — This is the clearance the boat had emerging from under the bridge in Bordeaux on our way to **Cadillac**. Thank goodness for a LOW tide.

We saw all kinds of things: vineyards, a big city (Bordeaux), tiny villages, 18th century forts,sculptures, chateaux, and so on. Got lots of pics to share. So many that I blew out my new Dropbox. Guess I have to pare down some. I don’t want to bore anyone, so I’ll post them according to themes. This week we’ll try NATURE.

Ultimately, we cruised along three different rivers near Bordeaux that week. Two met up at at the Gironde estuary not far from the Atlantic coast. Sadly, there were some, but not many, sea and river birds. I never got a good answer as to why that was given the estuary, but it might have something to do with the region’s agricultural practices.

Being in a world-famous wine region, of course, we toured several wineries. There was one which specialized in Sauternes wines – unfortunately, not my favorite, too sweet – but it was beautiful.

Bordeaux wine cruise — A wine chateau in the **Sauternes** wine region.

Mind you, chateaux in the Bordeaux area are not at all like those in the Loire valley. While those are about opulence and architecture, the ones in Bordeaux are more about commerce and the making and selling of wine. Often, there’s not a lot going on inside other than rooms for weddings,banquets, and wine tastings. These are real working farms and wineries. To that affect, see who we found at the one in Sauternes.

Karen Miller of Karen D. Miller Studio likes to post cool close-ups of leaves and trees and things. I managed to get a couple of tree pics for her.

And always, everywhere, things were growing!

But we didn’t have to be on land to enjoy nature’s bounty.

There was the captain of the Forseti. That was the name of our river boat.

Damn, I can get a bunch of posts out of this trip. Next time we’ll talk old buildings or something. I mean, we saw the ruins of a castle from the Middle Ages. You don’t see that every day in New Mexico. Till then, Tynan brings you this week’s rug on the frame.

HIGH ON HOOKING

Tag: France

Statues as rugs?

River cruising in Bordeaux – Nature