ROUSSILLON

I was here for a week::::

After driving for 5 hours past at least a dozen medieval cities, 3 wind farms, and a half an hour of cautious glimpses of the Mediterranean, I arrived in Roussillon, France.  Part of the Luberon Valley in Provence, war-time hide out of Beckett, Giacometti, and Camus (just before he careened off the road in his sports car.)  There were little hints as I approached that I was headed in the right direction: an orange stone outcropping hanging precariously over the road, an increase of mustard stucco, restaurants with names like “la cuisine de les couleurs.”  All of it was nothing compared to actually entering Roussillon proper.  Everything here exists in the warm half of the chromatic scale.  The only things that don’t are windows, doors, and the sky, which are , for the most part, blue.  Everything else: ochre.   And Ochre here is by no means either limited in its chroma or saturation.  Things glow here.  Scratch the earth and it bleeds.  It appears as though all the other organic matter has evolved to compete with its surroundings as everything else is intensely it’s own color: red (poppy) violet (flowers) quinacridone (cherries), except for the insects, which, are of course, yellow.  

I had the good luck of contacting Suzanne Sutton, an incredible woman and an ex-pat from Oakland, Ca, who helped me make contacts and more importantly made me feel welcome (thanks Suzanne!!)  Suzanne introduced me to Barbara Barrios, co-owner of Ohkra::: http://www.okhra.com/

Barbara explained everything that was available to me- which seemed like EVERYTHING.  After a tour of the facilities which included: workshop rooms, original machinery for grinding pigments, a curated selection of the pigment library, and an amazing bookstore, she took me upstairs to put together a schedule for my visit.   She suggested I first go walk the “Sentier d’Ochres” (the trail of Ochres) and set up appointments for me to go to the Society des Ochres in Apt and the Bruoux Mines which are Ochre mines from the 50’s.  She let me make some selections from the library. So amazing.  The resources available really did live up to all I expected. 

Also, a special thank you to Google Translate for getting me through 6 book in French and translating the word: tricolormetric.  You have vastly improved your vocabulary since the last time we met.  Also, did you know the limit of human vision is the ability to se a candle 27 meters in the distance? Whoa!

The Sentier d'Ocres:

Aside from a flash-happy tour group or two the trail is really incredible.  Everything is orange, and with everything orange everything else is more blue, or more green, than it otherwise would be. It's as though someone set the saturation to 100%.  Even the trunks of the scraggily conifers had been covered in ochre.  Orange trees.  I decided to take the “long trail” dubbed a 50 minute walk, but really much shorter.  At times I was completely alone.  The only thing I can liken the experience to is an artificial one, well actually an artistic one too I suppose.  Olaffur Eliasson used those special lights to turn everything monochromatic yellow in his MoMa installation.  Still, that’s giving him too much credit, this experience was sublime, and not manufcatured.

After the Sentier d'Ocres I treated myself to some Violet ice-cream. Turns out...not the same as it's more subtle cousin Lavender ice cream.  Violet seems to be just blended dime-a-tap...hmm.


The best part of the entire trip was going to the Mines at Bruoux::http://www.minesdebruoux.fr/ukaccueil.html

The mines have not been used for extracting Ochre since the 1950's. You can't take and pictures inside...I'll do my best to express the enormity of the place:  70km of "galeries"  (huge "rooms" in between 6m square "pilars") Completely. Chiseled. By. Hand.  The proportions of the mine were solely determined by the length of the miners arm plus the length of his pic-axe, plus the height of the hill they were mining into.  The ceiling of the mine had to be 80 meters below the surface.  So they would chip away bit by bit, beginning at the top and carving all the way down.  The average was about 1.5 feet per day.  It is vast space.  Dark, and freezing.  About half way down you hit the water table.  It's not accessible to the public but apparently there is a huge pond all the way at the back of the mine to collect all the water.   The first day I went my schedule was packed so I decided to come back on my last day to have lunch at their organic catering truck and draw the mines.  Instead I wound up coming back on my last day to draw the mines and wound up having a great conversation with the chef, Tobias.  Much older, Tobias remembered when they stopped mining, and how in the 60's there would be huge fetes and concerts and...ahem...other shenanigans...IN the mines.  He also told me stories about growing up around Giacometti and Beckett, who had lived right down the road apparently.   It was a great way to spend the last day.  At Suzanne's suggestion I might go back in October when EVERYTHING is orange. Take that O.E...