The life of a wall

by HRM on March 2, 2013

Artists take to the streets of Berlin

James Bullough and Addison Karl

James Bullough and Addison Karl are the kind of friends you want to have. Of course, they’re exceptionally talented. But that aside, they’re really great people. They’re men of their words, great for conversations and laughs, afternoon drinks and evening ramblings. Heck, Karl even had HRM into his gallery for our launch in rainy Berlin back in May of last year.

JBAK, their creative partnership, has been gaining momentum since they decided to combine their vast array of artistic talents. The large-scale work they produce is something impressive to behold. Astonishingly detailed and accurate line work paired with surprising colour palates, contributes to an effortlessness and ease that is conveyed in the final product. They capture real people in tender and joyful moments, and then they magnify and explode these scenes across walls and cities in Berlin and Europe.

These two American boys have made themselves important figures in the Berlin street art scene. They have managed to strike a delicate balance between the expressive and the precise, finding a space that supports both the real and the imaginary.

By Lacey Haynes

James Bullough and Addison Karl

What do you guys do?

We are both painters and illustrators in our own practice but together as JBAK we concentrate mostly on outdoor murals and large-scale studio paintings.  When we first started painting together about two years ago we noticed that one common thread between our individual practices was the use of portraiture, so we made that the main focus of our collaboration.  Since then, we’ve been working on a blend of our two very different styles and have developed a look that is quintessentially JBAK.

James Bullough and Addison Karl  

Why did you start working together?

We met by chance one night through friends of friends and got to talking.  It turned out that we had a lot of common interests, mainly bikes and street art.  After that, we tackled a few bike build projects and managed to go out painting a few times and it just sort of evolved from there.  At some point we decided to work on one large painting together rather than painting side by side like we had done in the past.  It went well and ever since then most of our murals have been together, although we still do separate work from time to time.

James Bullough and Addison Karl

What’s on the go for this year?

Currently we are finishing up a large commission project we have been working on for months.  It’s a series of 9 rather large portrait paintings of different people from Berlin (where we live) who had some connection or major life event tied to the division and reunification of East and West Germany.

It has been a major undertaking. From developing the project to finding the models for each painting, doing photo shoots with them and then of course the actual building of the custom “found wood” canvases and then painting them.  It has been a huge project and we have really enjoyed it, especially considering that we’ve been inside the studio working during the long cold Berlin winter rather than outside hanging from the side of a building like last winter.

From here, we will have an exhibition in March to show the new series of paintings and then the outside work begins again.  We have possible plans for two or three trips to North America for various projects and festivals and of course we will be out and about in Europe leaving our mark on walls in different cities.

James Bullough and Addison Karl

What have been some of the highlights of your collaboration?

In our first year of working together, we were able to get two very big walls in Berlin to paint. One was the entire side of a five story building in a neighbourhood of Berlin called Wedding (pronounced Vedding) as part of the Wedding Walls Project.  The other was an 18 meter wall sponsored by Etsy.com at the home of their Etsy labs workshop space.  Those were both very exciting and rewarding projects and we learned a lot about what kind of work we wanted to do in the future.

We also had the chance this past year to do some travelling and take our paintings to other cities.  We did murals in Chemnitz and Dresden as part of the Colour Revolution project and the CityBilder project were definite highlights.

James Bullough and Addison Karl

What does being in Berlin mean for your street cred? Opportunity wise? And for you creatively?

Saying you are a painter or a street artist in Berlin is like saying in any other city that you like to eat food.  There’s an overflow of artists here and because of the somewhat loose regulations on street art many people hit the streets with their work.  This can be a double-edged sword of course, or maybe more like a quadruple edged sword.  On one hand, the opportunity for spots to paint and people to paint with are seemingly endless.  On the other hand, with so many people going out to paint every day and so many tourists coming to Berlin just to go out and paint, your work can get covered up quite quickly.  Often a piece that you spend hours and hours working on will get tagged over in just a few days by some kid from out of town passing through Berlin on a two day “graffiti vacation”.

It’s just sort of the life of a wall in this city.  If nothing else, it motivates people to be a little more selective with where they paint.  It’s also really difficult to stand out in Berlin with so many different people putting up quality work, and also totally shitty work.  We have decided that quality is paramount for JBAK over quantity.  We may only get 20 pieces up over a year’s time but those 20 pieces are big and show off how much thought and effort went into them.   It has become apparent to us that if you really bust your ass and look for good opportunities, they are out there to be found.  Following this rule has seemed to earn us a level of respect that we are very happy to hold in a city with so many good artists.

James Bullough and Addison Karl

James Bullough and Addison Karl

James Bullough and Addison Karl

James Bullough and Addison Karl

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American Girl

by HRM on February 21, 2013

A Conversation on The Dolls, The Dream, and The Life with photographer Ilona Szwarc

Ilona Szwarc

When I caught sight of Ilona Szwarc’s American Girls project online, I was instantly hooked. Szwarc captured images of girls with their American Girl doll counterparts, and the relationship between the dolls and the girls had a kind of magical tension. I clicked through the series, mesmerized at this glimpse into the lives of girls throughout the country.

One interesting tension was the level of resemblance between the girls and their dolls. The most appealing part of the American Girl doll franchise is, of course, the fact that you can design them to look like anyone. Anyone at all. One can imagine the wishful, more serious sentiment hidden behind this capability. What real life American girl hasn’t wished for a more perfect version of herself, or to resemble someone else?

This relationship between dreams and reality (and what this signifies for girls growing up in America) is at the heart of Szwarc’s series, which is an eloquent examination that recently won third place in the 56th World Press Photo Contest under the ‘Observed Portraits’ category. Both beautiful and intriguing, Szwarc’s photographs immediately engage the viewer while inviting a conversation on the complexities behind the images themselves.

– Carolyn Supinka

Ilona Szwarc

CS: What first drew you to the American Girl brand as a subject?

IS: I was struck by the fact that the product was actually called “American Girl.” I thought that it clearly meant that the company imposes stereotypes about who a contemporary American girl is.

To me it felt really exclusive – only about Americans and for Americans – and I began to wonder where I fit in this scenario, and if I could ever fit in. Although the basic premise of those dolls is that you can create your ‘mini-me version,’ girls are in fact offered a limited number of choices. All of the dolls have mostly the same features –the only choices that are given to girls are skin color (three: light, medium and dark skin), eye color (around forty options) and many hairstyles (more than eighty options), yet the basic face mold and figure of all dolls stays the same: a slim, petite and androgynous shape. So I began to question further how individuality is manifested in this world and how is it communicated to children. As all the dolls really look the same, the only denominator of individuality relies in the hair style and fashion, of which girls are given the most possible choices. Constructing female identity happens through the choice of hair color and style, and the choice of clothes or fashionable accessories.

Those dolls definitely represent a set of currently accepted cultural values. The features of the dolls are standardized; they offer a democratic look: the same face and body shape. The dolls are fully clothed and very pretty. They are meant to carry a message of empowerment to girls. However, what I have noticed is that actually they only perpetuate traditional gender roles and keep the focus of girls on body grooming and dressing up as a way of identity maintenance.

Ilona Szwarc

CS: The spaces you photograph are so intimate, and are some of the most important spaces in a girl’s childhood: bedrooms, backyards. Did you pick these settings, or did the girls? Can you talk about why you chose these spaces, or why the girls chose them?

IS: When I first came to New York City I wanted to become a street photographer, so I began going out every day and photographing on the streets. I started noticing girls carrying dolls that look like them, and wearing matching outfits. At first, the girls just began appearing in the corners of my frames, then eventually I sought them out and I would stop them on the street and take their portraits. But I quickly realized that the photograph of a child with her doll does not really make sense on the street, and that’s when I decided that I wanted to photograph them in their homes. This way, my models would feel more comfortable and also it made more sense to see them in their own environments, where they actually play with their dolls.

Once I decided to photograph girls in their homes, there was a lot of production involved. First I would seek subjects who wanted to participate in my project, who owned the dolls and were passionate about them; I would talk to their parents and discuss details about the shoot, so the girls would know all about it. They were all very curious and excited for me to come to photograph them and wanted to participate in the creation of the photographs. So there was not a single structure to the way I would approach the making of the photograph –sometimes I would suggest something, and sometimes the girls would show me places they really liked.

Ilona Szwarc

CS: What did you talk about with the girls?

IS: I asked the girls to introduce themselves, to tell me a little bit about their lives, and about their dolls: when they got them, in what circumstances, what do they like or dislike about the dolls. I asked them how they usually play with their dolls. I also opened them up to talk about their futures, and their dreams.

CS: What was the relationship like between the girls and their dolls? Do you feel that the dolls reflect the girls, or are more symbols of what they aspire to be?

IS: From what I have observed, some girls relate to their dolls as their sisters, twins, or best friends. As the dolls constitute a part of the owner’s identity, they are both mini-me’s and pseudo-daughters.

The look-alike doll is a way that helps girls carve out their identity. Girls project their identities onto the dolls and then they experiment with them through the mini-me doll play, and then when they’re ready, they leave the doll behind. On the other hand this is an imitation of what happens to adults who have children. Children look like the parents, so in a sense this is a very natural need to have a baby that looks like us.

It really varies –each girl would have a different idea. One of my subjects, Sarah, thought of her doll as herself. She said she would try out different outfits on the doll to see how she will look like in some clothes, and she would try out different styles on her.

Two other girls, sisters Ariane and Meridien, talked to me about how they look up to the dolls and this about behaving well and treating them more like role models.

Ilona Szwarc

CS: What was your own childhood like? Did you find anything reminiscent of your own childhood in this photography series?

IS: I was born in 1984 in Warsaw, Poland. At that time Poland was still under the communist regime and it was during my early childhood that it was going through the change of the political system. Right after the collapse of the Soviet regime, my father, who worked as a pilot on transatlantic connections, got my first passport and took me on a short trip to US during one of his flights. No words can describe what this experience meant for me and how much it changed my perspective.

Traveling to America when I was young, I always wondered what it would be like to grow up here. Once I moved to New York as an adult, I wanted to revisit those feelings I had back then. In this body of work, I explore enclosed worlds of young girls who are growing up in the US. I explore what girls – that is, future women — are influenced by in this culture. By investigating the American Girl Doll phenomenon –girls who passionately collect customizable mini-me dolls –I examine how female identity is constructed in contemporary consumer society.

Coming from a different country gave me the perspective to see that these dolls –with all the accessories –are the most luxurious toys ever invented, and I have not seen anything like that anywhere else. Thinking about the situation of children from around the world, my photographs place themselves on the other end of the spectrum from the documentary photographs of children living in extreme conditions in Africa for example. They show how there are extreme inequalities in the world.

Also, working on this project made me realize that America and therefore American Girl dolls are all about celebrating every person as an individual. Every child in America bears a sense of entitlement and self-importance. It is a very empowering message for girls –in a way every girl can be a star, who has a doll made after her. I don’t think there was an equivalent of such attitude in my country when I was growing up. I think this is helping girls build up confidence and strength of their characters.

Ilona Szwarc

CS: Were all of the girls photographed born in America? What do you think it means to be an ‘American girl’?

IS: Yes, all of the girls that I photographed were born in America. I think there might have been one exception. I photographed Holly, who was adopted by an American family from South Korea. She was adopted as a baby and she identified herself as American. English was her first language and this is the culture she grew up in.

What it means to be an American girl? I think it’s great to be an American girl and it definitely means a sense of importance, entitlement, a sense of luxury. It also means a sense of concentration and focus on “me.” I think girls who are growing up here are exposed to a great abundance of opportunities and they can create themselves as they wish.

But, at the same time, I am not American and I did not grow up in the US, so these are only my subjective observations and thoughts.

Ilona Szwarc

CS: The brand name itself labels these dolls (and their owners) as American girls. Can you talk about your observations of American girls, and femininity in America?

IS: As I said in the beginning, I was really struck by the fact that these dolls are called “American Girls”. Just the semiotics of this phrase were disturbing to me. I started to think why this company is defining American girls, and I had a strong reaction to the fact that they used this to appeal to such a broad audience. This mix of femininity and consumption was something I really wanted to address in this body of work.

I felt like this company was categorizing American girls, who will become future American women and that fact raises important questions about who gets represented and how.

I think there is a lot to talk about femininity in America, but something that stood out to me is that the product American Girls is meant for older girls, from 8 years old and up. This idea is foreign to me, as I remember in Europe, we would want to leave the dolls behind as soon as we could. By 6 years old we were all done with Barbies.. Here it seems to me that the company that manufactures the dolls wanted to keep their clients for a longer period of time, and they have done it successfully. Parents are adopting this as the idea that their daughters will have a longer childhood, and as an artist I am wondering what effect will this prolonged play have on a generation of women who are growing up like that. I am only posing questions and opening up the discussion by presenting my photographs that way. Do the dolls really extend their childhood? Or perhaps it takes away from the strength that girls could develop, and contributes to the infantilization of women?

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Crafting objects into stories

by HRM on February 12, 2013

Interview with Sonia Rentsch

Sonia Rentsch

I first met Sonia Rentsch in Berlin a couple of years ago when she came to one of my yoga classes. I remember it being grey and wintery, cozy but drafty. I didn’t know then that Sonia was such a creative force. During the exchange of yoga, I don’t often learn the details of my student’s lives – jobs, partners, pets. Instead I get to know the way they breathe, move, experience their own bodies – who they are when the rest is stripped away.

Sonia to me is full of warmth and openness. She has an easy nature that is permeable, ready to accept, learn and explore. She asked questions about specifics, about the alignment in asanas and about the breath. This precision, the attention to finer points, is very much visible in Sonia’s imaginative and meticulous creations.

She has sky-rocketed since leaving Berlin for Melbourne, consistently turning out the most carefully constructed pieces. Her work is deceptively simple and tightly executed.

– by Lacey Haynes

Sonia Rentsch

What is it exactly that you do?
I am a Still Life Stylist though I prefer the title 3D Illustrator. I craft objects into scenes.

What shape does your average day take – from first coffee to jim-jams?
I like to take breakfast on a tray, if possible by an open window. Every day is different but generally it starts with an email review, the making of a list and then I either hit the pavement on a project or move objects around until they make sense in a story.

Sonia Rentsch

What projects are you currently working on?
Right now? The next edition of Raw Medium for Meat and Livestock Australia and an idea for an exhibition curated by Joseph Allen Shea and Edward Davis. Generally I’m plotting to conquer the world.

Put 2012 into review – what were some of your biggest career moments?
The Washington Post picking up my images for use on the front cover of their Weekend Mag was by far the highlight.

2012 was an incredibly brilliant year for me. It concreted exactly what I want to do and how I do it. I was lucky enough to do some brilliant jobs including the cover of local mag Desktop. I worked with a troupe of incredible people and I learnt that anything is possible.

Sonia Rentsch

What shape is 2013 taking for you?
One that involves loads of travel, loads of dedication and loads of saving.

I just gave up coffee and I’m planning to try and be in New York, Paris and London before the year is done. I’ve realised that life is only what you make it and the possibilities on offer are endless.

Sonia Rentsch

Sonia Rentsch

Sonia Rentsch

Sonia Rentsch

See more of what Sonia Rentsch has been up to: www.soniarentsch.com

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A Gallery Undone

by HRM on February 4, 2013

The role of the curator rethought on the Upper East Side

By Madison Mainwaring

The expanse of the main room at the beginning of the evening.

The expanse of the main room at the beginning of the evening.

The original intensity of a work of art tends to be obscured by the formality of its own presentation. Only occasionally does the framework of typical convention break down, when art can stand for itself, rather than the value it signifies. It can be observed and interpreted for what it is, rather than what its custodians want it to be.

A Neo-primitivist thread runs through Anna Mikhailovskaia’s work. On the left, Untitled (Crusty Holes); on the right, Josef Albers Goes to Africa

Gabriela Salazar collects disposed materials, then compresses them to fit into negative spaces. A stray “wedge” made of rope can be found above eye-level in between the hinges of the door close by.

The opening of “New York I Love You Sometimes,” presented at the temporary exhibition space Classic Six on January 26th, allowed for such an occasion. Hosted by Alison Chace and curated by George Terry, twenty artists presented their work in media ranging from sculpture to painting to video. No explicit theme dominated the show; no economy governed the exchange. The art was present, and people came.

Ben A. Jones’s flattened hexagonal sculpture, Vapid, hangs on the wall. The piece explores the physicality of soundscapes in reverberation and delay. Photographer/mixed media artist Dan Estabrook in the foreground.

Ben A. Jones’s flattened hexagonal sculpture, Vapid, hangs on the wall. The piece explores the physicality of soundscapes in reverberation and delay. Photographer/mixed media artist Dan Estabrook in the foreground.

Adam Parker Smith’s piece above the mantle. The window of the gallery steamed over due to the heat of moving bodies in the space, and Mr. Smith’s “It’s a girl!” was re-written on its surface, with slight alterations.The girl became

Adam Parker Smith’s piece above the mantle. The window of the gallery steamed over due to the heat of moving bodies in the space, and Mr. Smith’s “It’s a girl!” was re-written on its surface, with slight alterations. the boy became “It’s a boy!,” but even that didn’t last long; all was eventually superceded by “It’s twins! It’s twins!”

The space itself deserves mention—the third floor of a limestone mansion, the old Drexel estate, built at the turn of the twentieth century. The walls feature ornate molded frames, whitewashed but visible in shadow. The floor is a true and polished parquet. A fireplace can be found in each room, a reminder of the building’s previous domestic function while lending a sense of warmth and intimacy.

Mixed-media installation by James Foster. The work depicts rock forms, both artificial and real. Crumpled foil with gold leaf imitates the actual meteorite, which can be found in secondhand representation only: the picture.

Mixed-media installation by James Foster. The work depicts rock forms, both artificial and real. Crumpled foil with gold leaf imitates the actual meteorite, which can be found in secondhand representation only: the picture.

Alison Chace greets newcomers in the gallery hall.

Alison Chace greets newcomers in the gallery hall.

And the event was intimate. Faces were familiar to each other, the voices were loud. The feel was of a salon, in the three senses of the word: a gathering of people in appreciation of ideas; a presentation of emerging artists in the style of the annual Parisian convention; and the drawing or living room in a home.

Meta-moment: a picture of a picture of a picture being taken. Monika Sziladi’s Untitled (Smile).

Meta-moment: a picture of a picture of a picture being taken. Monika Sziladi’s Untitled (Smile).

If the exhibition was of the salon variety, Ms. Chace served as a true salonière, providing food, drink, and a venue for the evening.

Ross Moreno addressing a rather captivated audience. Much of the performance was influenced by the tropes of a typical childhood party.

Ross Moreno addressing a rather captivated audience. Much of the performance was influenced by the tropes of a typical childhood party.

Mr. Terry selected the content of the show by reaching out to artists he knew and admired. An underlying connection ran between the artists, perhaps not of theme but of verve, the similarities being implicit rather than explicit. The artwork was made by individuals who are related in some way, either by social connection or artistic occupation, and this was made manifest in the event itself.

The after-effects of the performance. Index cards with deeply rhetorical questions also lay scattered about (and yes, that is a stuffed turkey).

The after-effects of the performance. Index cards with deeply rhetorical questions also lay scattered about (and yes, that is a stuffed turkey).

Gabriela Salazar collects disposed materials, then compresses them to fit into negative spaces. A stray “wedge” made of rope can be found above eye-level in between the hinges of the door close by.

A Neo-primitivist thread runs through Anna Mikhailovskaia’s work. On the left, Untitled (Crusty Holes); on the right, Josef Albers Goes to Africa

Such a connection seemed to allow for a mutual understanding between artist and onlooker. “This doesn’t feel like middle school,” observed Andy Ness (of the All Dressed Up and Nowhere to Go sculpture) in reference to the typical apprehension surrounding the public display of work. Brett Day Windham confirmed this sense: “Some of the other artists and I realized that we were not feeling the usual agonizing self-consciousness…the warm domestic elegance of the interior and the thoughtful curation of the show actually bolstered how we experienced the work.” The architecture of the collective exhibition had both meaning and consequence for all the individuals involved.

Curator George Terry talks with artist James Williams III. Two paintings by Lumin Wakoa hang in the background; she examines architectural spaces on the canvas, making the three-dimensional two and then back again.

Curator George Terry talks with artist James Williams III. Two paintings by Lumin Wakoa hang in the background; she examines architectural spaces on the canvas, making the three-dimensional two and then back again.

The location of the gallery, 1 East 62nd Street, lent itself as the ultimate representative of the city, the primary number being a pinnacle of sorts. Many of the attendees made the pilgrimage from studios in Brooklyn; the familiarity between partygoers was in large part due to proximate geography. “The show is about being an artist in New York,” said Mr. Terry when discussing the title. And perhaps the exhibition attempts to explain or justify the purpose of city life, in spite of its relentless grind and noise and travel: the excitement surrounding an intense discussion and production of ideas, pieces, projects; a shared relationship between individuals, no matter how isolated their work.

Brett Day Windham’s Floating Harlequin sculpture. Windham worked with the idea of the artist as a wounded fool; the public looks on, confounded, while the artist works inside, their thoughts kept a secret.

Brett Day Windham’s Floating Harlequin sculpture. Windham worked with the idea of the artist as a wounded fool; the public looks on, confounded, while the artist works inside, their thoughts kept a secret.

The rapport allowed for a certain sense of play. The large crowd made for a compressed intermingling in and about the pieces themselves; in order to move in any direction one had to engage in a duck and weave. And the performance piece, conducted by Ross Moreno and Justin Cooper, kept the audience undermined in the best way. Heart-shaped balloons from the act began sticking to various chests and sleeves. One would pop and there would be joke of some emotional overflow.

Ross Moreno and Justin Cooper in a sea of tangled balloons.

Ross Moreno and Justin Cooper in a sea of tangled balloons.

The motto of the eighteenth-century salon came from the Roman lyric poet Horace, who wrote that the purpose of art was “either to please or to educate.” New York I Love You Sometimes brings that same two-fold intention back, and even questions the division between the two; the either/or becomes a definitive and.

The space during the day-time. From the left: a textile work by Carolyn Salas; Windham’s sculpture; Andy Ness’s All Dressed Up and Nowhere to Go; Rory Baron’s Electrician installation on the wall.

The space during the day-time. From the left: a textile work by Carolyn Salas; Windham’s sculpture; Andy Ness’s All Dressed Up and Nowhere to Go; Rory Baron’s Electrician installation on the wall.

“New York I Love You Sometimes” will be open by appointment until February 9th. Contact George Terry: george@georgeterrystudio.com

The Classic Six invitation page: www.facebook.com/events/126436094190810/

All photos credited to Johnathon Henninger, photojournalist: www.documonkey.blogspot.com

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The Artists of Belleville

by HRM on January 16, 2013

By Patrick Errington

cars

Sacha Guitry, a Russian-born French dramatist and actor, said famously, “Être parisien, ce n’est pas être né à Paris, c’est y renaître,” (“To be Parisian is not to be born in Paris, but reborn”), a statement that probably unifies the artists of Belleville, the loosely defined quarter that dribbles into the 10th, 11th, 19th, and 20th arrondissements of Paris.

Belleville is unique in Paris. Not architecturally, no—like most of the city it saw the sculpting hands of Baron Haussmann and his disciples who created the large boulevards and cut swathes through the lacework of little streets and opened the verdant slopes of the Belleville hill to its two main parks. But with his demolition of the inner-city side-streets and slums, Haussmann caused an exodus of the working class from central Paris to the newly annexed “city” of Belleville. And this feeling of remoteness and community is still felt in this neighbourhood.

Part of what gives Belleville its charm is its multiculturalism. Since the early 20th century, its working-class atmosphere and consequently lower rent prices have drawn many immigrants, from the Ashkenazi Jews and Spaniards in the 1930s to Tunisians, Algerians and Chinese in more recent years. (In fact, as a result of this cultural mish-mash there have been reports of disputes or even “gang wars,” but after a year of living there, I saw no real evidence of this.)

Lower costs also attract artists. Like in the famed Montmartre during France’s Belle Époque, or Montparnasse in the days of Hemingway, Fitzgerald and the other artist expatriates between the great wars and before the marring modernizations of the 1960s and ‘70s (and the oppressive monolith, the Tour de Montparnasse), cheap living in Europe’s most inspirational city has been the candle around which so many moths flutter.

Hélène Vitali

Before continuing, I should clarify. One cannot deny that Paris—all of Paris—is teeming with artists of every sort. Walk along Montmartre with your eyes closed and before you fall down any stairs you’re guaranteed to trip over a half-dozen painters, caricaturists, or musicians. Or in the twisting alleyways between St. Germain-des-Près and the river, or in the bouquiniste’s boxes along the Seine itself, there is ample evidence of artwork being conceived, created and commoditized. But these are not the artists I was looking for. Those most often seen in Paris are the established few who are earning vast sums, or schools and universities on the (now significantly reduced) stipends of governments, or those doling out five-minute watercolours of Notre Dame or sketches of the Tour Eiffel evolving into a giraffe or caricatures of tourists as wide-eyed monkeys by the dozen. I wanted the ones pushing boundaries, those making art because they love it, because there is no other way. I found those people in Belleville.

You have to look, of course, but not hard. While not as pearly-white and polished as more central locations in the city, yet with none of the tourist frenzy, Belleville can be off-putting at first. But after a few moments, once you escape the hubbub and thronging mix around the métro station, you’ll find yourself slipping in and out of sinuous side-streets as if they were water, strolling avenues that have escaped so many modernizing and cleansing touches, places that seem, despite the cellphone shops and internet cafés, as if they are part of a Paris only read about or seen in photographs and sepia-tone.

Hélène Vitali

That feeling is what attracted metalworker, jeweler and stained-glass worker, Hélène Vitali to her workshop location at 28 rue Jean-Moinon, just north of Belleville station.

“This part of Paris still has spirit,” she explained, indicating the tiny street out her shop window that slopes down toward the old Hôpital Saint Louis.

Behind the red-boarded exterior, her shop is tiny, filled to overflowing with metal and glassworks. One of few people I’ve found who was born and raised in Paris, her pieces are a fascinating and modern, a mix of traditional materials and very contemporary shapes.

“There are very few people still making art with stained glass, with copper, with steel,” she states. “What I do is take really old materials, things people have been working with for hundreds of years, and use them in new and interesting ways that people have never thought of before.”

Vitali’s formation was as an apprentice in traditional glass-staining techniques. It was while working as a restorer of windows for churches and cathedrals that she began experimenting with her own designs. Here, she was working on a mirror, an oval shape framed by a steel and copper and melted lead that looked like droplets.

“This is what I love doing,” she indicated the edges, “taking something functional and making it into art.”

She shows me several other examples, including a table lamp with a shade made of stained glass fragments.

“Making money, though, is what’s hard,” she says.

Tucked away in a small alleyway in Paris, it’s easy to understand. She tells me that she exhibits in other locations and that she also makes things to order, indicating a series wall-fixtures that she is constructing for a new bar in the area. She also makes and sells jewelry. This place, she says, is just her workshop.

I asked her why she has her workshop here, why Paris.

She laughed, “Belleville, because it’s cheap. And because this city is all old materials used to make something new.”

Adriana Popovic

Turning traditional on its head is just what Adriana Popović does, too. Located just down the road from Vitali, Popović’s work follows a similar thesis but in a very different direction. She is a sculptor because she has “always loved the material.”

Daughter of a renowned surrealist painter from Serbia, Popović grew up in Paris with art in her blood. Her pieces too, touch on the surreal, the fantastic. Like the more tortured sculptures of Rodin, the more abstract, her sculptures are full of movement, seeming to twist or writhe on their platforms.

She explained how her work grew out of an expanded reality, a reality of the mind, rather than the sensory world. Influenced greatly by surrealism, artists like William Blake, the realm of nightmares, of the fantastic, the semi-mythological, all imbue her darkly coloured pieces with a turbulent, dreamlike quality.

Like Vitali, Popović turns to more functional pieces, though, to earn a living. Using similar methods to her true interest, she sculpts dishes and vases, glazing them in more colour and adding only a few twists to the edges, a little reminder of the skill she hides in them.

In a way, Belleville has become like those plates, its purely functional façades (as purely functional as anything gets in the architecturally extravagant Paris) encasing so many talented artists. So many workshops are walked past every day in Belleville, few people even guessing at the fascinating people at work just behind the doors.

Angelo Aversa Woodcuts

Were it not for the early dark of winter and the warmth of the light inside, I might never have ventured into the workshop of Angelo Aversa, never discovering one of the most fascinating artists along the place Sainte Marthe, just one block from Vitali and Popović.

Emigrating from Italy, where he was raised in and around Naples, Aversa found his home away from home in Belleville.

“This area is like a village, really,” he explained. “It’s the only place in Paris I think I could really live. It’s international,” he exchanges waves some people passing the window, “everyone knows each other—there are five Italians within 20 square meters!”

With true small-town hospitality, he had invited me inside his small shop, made us coffee and offered me a plate of biscuits.

“I’ve seen pictures of Paris—old pictures, from a hundred years ago,” he continued. “This quartier looks a bit like that.”

Angelo Aversa Woodcuts

Aversa’s work is almost exclusively prints made from woodcuts. Using soft woods, he carves a stamp which, with mostly red and black inks, he uses to stamp a picture onto Japanese paper.

“I still think it’s a miracle that people want to buy the things I create,” he laughed.

Having quit school at fourteen, Aversa turned to art. He first learned traditional Renaissance-style painting as an artist’s apprentice and studied at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Napoli in Naples.

“But the most important lesson as an artist is to unlearn,” he added. “You have to learn and learn and learn, and then, eventually, you just have to forget it all and do what you do.”

When asked about his influences, he replied, “You just have to develop your own style—just by doing. Start simply. Just draw something, then do it again a little different, and keep doing it and you’ll find your style.”

It was in Paris that he met his wife, who was visiting from Boston and who bought one of the prints that he was exhibiting. It was she who first showed him the neighbourhood of Belleville and he was captured by the magic of it, despite its somewhat run-down nature. She now shares the studio with him, using the space for her fashion business and him using it to exhibit his pieces.

Angelo Aversa Woodcuts

“She is a real source of inspiration for me.” He indicates a number of striking prints. “Her and my son.”

I asked him how he liked sharing a studio with his wife and her colleagues.

“We work well together,” he said, “Though I do most of the actual working at home a few blocks away. But I never go to the fashion parties and social events. All that talking! Languages aren’t really my thing. Art is my language.”

The business side of things is not what interests Aversa either.

“You never know what people are going to like. All of my best pieces, the ones that speak to people, are ones I wasn’t sure about. They are the ones with a spirit. The ones that I thought ‘Ah yeah, I can see it, it’s going to be great!’ never sell. That is the mystery of art.”

Before I left, he brought out some of his older woodcuts to compare to the newer pieces that line the walls.

“The important thing is not to close your mind, to keep an open spirit, to never stop changing. I’m in my forties and I never know how I might change, tomorrow.”

Angelo Aversa Woodcuts

Those words stick with me even now. Belleville is changing, as is Paris. Just down the street from Aversa, Vitali, and Popović, new buildings are going in, buildings of a modern design, of steel and wood and uncarved stone, so incongruous with the rest in the area. The prices are going up in Belleville as housing becomes progressively scarcer in the city. Economic turns are further reducing what little money goes to the arts. How long will it be until artists will no longer be able to afford workshops here? How much longer will Paris be the city of art it has so long been? How can it keep from becoming just a shadow of its glory days?

The artists of Belleville are doing their part to keep the traditions alive, to breathe new life into them, no matter their own backgrounds and upbringings. They have even started exhibiting together, Vitali, Popović, Aversa, and others, having just collaborated to launch a Christmas exhibition. In the summers, the Place Sainte Marthe, the Parc des Buttes Chaumont and others are filled with concerts and exhibitions of artwork that are so worth exploring. And the city too, is doing its part, organizing a yearly opening of the workshops of Belleville. Together they are turning old materials into new shapes.

Things are changing, there can be no doubt of that. But as they do, so artists change, so art changes. Paris will adapt, as will Belleville. And art will adapt with them. Today, Belleville may be the latest in the list of Paris’ bohemian haunts. Who knows how it might be reborn again tomorrow?

Hélène Vitali is a Parisian metal and glassworker whose jewelry and furnishings can be found in her exhibit at La Création Bastille on the boulevard Richard Lenoir (10:00 am to 7:00 pm) in Paris or on her website: art-vitrail.over-blog.net. Parisian/Serbian sculptor, Adriana Popović’s works can be found at her workshop at 22 rue Jean Moinon, and pictures on her website: adrianapopovic.tumblr.com. Woodcut prints and paintings by Angelo Aversa, can be found at 21 rue Sainte Marthe in Paris, and can be seen on his website: woodcut.weebly.com.

 

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