A whole week has passed here at Les Tapies since the students first arrived! On Sunday the 30th, the whole hamlet enjoyed a much-needed lie in, abruptly ended when word spread that our head chef, Perrin, had arrived with a mouthwatering display of viennoiseries for breakfast! After a morning trip into the tiny, but lively nearby village, Saint Pierreville, for Sunday market, each group set off for a short day trip.
The Architecture students headed for a collection of tree houses that are rented out as vacation homes, in order to glean possible ideas for their own tree houses they are designing for our hamlet. Following an introduction to portrait photography yesterday, the Photo majors left for the gorgeous hill town of Chalencon to test their skills with the people in town and capture the character of a truly historic and unique rural French town environment. The D&P majors remained a bit closer to home, readying themselves for a walk just up the hill from our hamlet to plein air paint in the landscape, some working in acrylic paint, and others in oils.
Much awaits for our students this week, beginning with an excursion to Avignon on Tuesday and a gallery opening in our own Les Tapies gallery on Wednesday, featuring the work of all the faculty. This gallery opening follows the taking down of our P&D instructor, John’s, incredible solo exhibition, “Memory, Recollection, and Invention,” combining the history of this area in both physical objects and in theory with geometric abstraction in a moving and varied display that students viewed and heard about Friday afternoon.
Today, Tuesday the 2nd, our students travel to Avignon to visit the Palais des Papes, where the popes lived for a century leading up to the Great Schism, the Collection Lambert, which houses a private family collection of contemporary art, and the Pont du Gard, which is considered one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. More soon!