Snow snow and more blooming snow ........

February 5th 2012
I realize I have turned the page on my calendar and I have been here a month! And I realize we are nearly half way through in a blink of an eye!

The time has shot past important British artists, Paul Cox and Chris Brown have visited imparting knowledge and time to all the students, we have traveled ten hours in a bus to Angouleme for the 39th festival of comic novels, 250,000 people from the age of 4 to 84 all enjoying Spiegleman and Maus. Telling us the story of the holocaust, it spans the life of two generations, a piece of brilliant pictorial story telling. I am listening to him, speaking about the story telling on Radio 4 today on book club with James Naughtie.

What an extraordinary experience for all of us it is difficult to describe the pleasure of the cobblestones, the delights of the cafeteria, the pleasure of the locals and the bar and the need every once in a while to escape down the mountain to find the real world. My French has improved somewhat; the accent fits in with the South!
We have had snow for the past week, it was a romantic morning last week, blanketed in white and is slowly disappearing, luckily no bones broken for any of us just many people suffering from la Grippe or excessive sneezing.

We have had to improvise for our travel portfolio classes, which in fact produced some exquisite results; they became small theatrical backdrops for plays written in our heads around Angouleme, I was so excited at the scenes students managed to create.
Chris Brown went beyond the call of duty in his week with us; he instigated a great lino project Twelve Snow Scenes in Lacoste. My print class has produced an editioned set of twelve abstract snow scenes in black and white, Chris is printing the cover and sending us each a signed print. Both Chris and Paul have been fabulous to be around, I have felt like a student myself sucking up so much knowledge! Students have appreciated their feedback enthusiasm and intelligence.
Thoughts for the month:
We are in a dream and we will wake up back in Portsmouth
The Queen will have been on the throne for sixty years tomorrow
We have great students with great ideas.
I let the stray cat into my book class he fell asleep on the life model’s bed.
I love Aix en Provence more in winter.
There is not enough time to do anything for me.
I am still looking for more depot ventes!