Les Ateliers

The plan was to meet Madame V at the "Beaubourg", the parisian pet name for the Centre Georges Pompidou, for free museum day. The architecture is quite shocking, the permanent collection interesting, and I thought it was time I included her in my blog. I rarely miss free museum day, and of course I know there are certain places to avoid like the plague (Mona Lisa being at the top of the list), but I wasn't at all prepared for the mile long queue that awaited us upon our arrival. It didn't take long to rethink our afternoon, the sun was out and the weather fine for a stroll down Rue Rivoli. We admired the beautiful Tour St. Jacques as we made our way through Chatelet, stopping occasionally to ogle the latest spring fashion displayed in the window of a shop naturally closed on Sunday. There was an air of calm that is unique to the day of rest here, which leaves one free to notice things often overlooked, like a giant pair of pants two stories high, and the biggest pair of red polka dot culottes I have personally ever seen. What began as a photo opp became a serendipitous discovery of an artists atelier (workshop), six splendid floors of painted staircases, muraled walls, and art stacked and hung in every square inch of the place! My camera was working overtime as we discovered treasure after treasure; metalwork and engraving, doll making and collages, realism and total abstraction, and everything in between. One room was a completely crazy jumble of random items that looked like the average storage unit, crammed full of forgotten memories and useless junk you just can't part with. It was at once fascinating and horrifying, like an episode of "Hoarders". There was an artist crouched on the floor making a big production of drawing two young girls he had wrangled into sitting for him, and it was pure theatre! He played the role of eccentric and wacky artist to the hilt, complete with sound effects and gratuitous flirtation, and was more than willing to play to my camera. (He knew all the right poses). There was a beautiful and friendly sheltie busy herding and keeping tabs on the flock of visitors moving through the 4th floor, and she willingly let me pet her silky coat, offering kisses generously. On the very top floor was a beautiful young artist, with fun watercolour sketches of jazz musicians on display. This was right up our alley, and Madame V struck up a conversation with him. We discovered there are jazz concerts in this venue, also that the entire building changes artists once a month. Oh la la - I tried to imagine the clusterfuck of junk three floors down, and the daunting task of actually moving it! In the end, Madame V purchased a watercolour for her darling J.P., and quite unexpectedly I was offered gratuit a charming painting of a drummer who reminds me of my favorite batteur, Pier Paolo Pozzi. It was a touching gesture on his part, and the perfect end to a beautiful Sunday afternoon in Paris!