Annie Fain » travel

A Chateau & A Croissant

Annie Fain — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 11:07:30 +0000

O.K., this might be a little confusing, but stick with me. After the old-time weekend and then recording with Polo and Nadine I returned to the little cottage in Champtocé that I was sharing with Clara (which involved the same 45 minute trek from the little train stop).

She had had a lovely, solitary week and a half reading books, drawing, journaling, working on the computer AND making fires in the fireplace.

Here is the rest of the story about how we found the cottage. As some of you know, Laurie Corral, of Asheville Bookworks, and I were asked to teach a 9 day workshop at Chateau du Pin in the Loire Valley. When Clara had the idea to find a place for a month-long retreat she suggested I ask, Peg Gignoux, the woman who hired us to teach at the Chateau. As it turned out, Peg’s cousin Marie had cottages for rent just down the road from the Chateau. Have I lost you yet?

During our time at the cottage we made buddies with Marie (our land lady) and Louise (Peg’s sister) who is living at the Chateau for 3 months to help with the family business. This is how it came to be that we received a personal tour of the grounds.

The story of the Chateau is an interesting one. Louise told us various tid-bits; it was seized as living quarters for the Nazi’s during the war and at present it’s owned by almost 20 members of the French-American Gignoux family.

Pretty nice eh?

The story continues…Clara has a rule for herself when it comes to France: Never go to France without going to Paris for a few days. So, staying true to her rule, she had planned 5 days in Paris at the end of her month-long stay. Being the lovely person she is, she invited me to come along. Who passes up being in Paris? Not me!

Champtocé sur Loire: Travel Break

Annie Fain — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 09:19:31 +0000

As you might have guessed by now, where I am in reality and where I am on the blog are not in alignment (though I promise to be caught up by the end of my trip).

I tell you this because what I’m about to write about is my mid-trip rest break, though in reality I am now nearing the end of my trip. By the time I left Cathi’s house in Sisteron I had been visiting people via planes-trains-and-automobiles for 3 months. While still in the U.S. my friend-marketing mentor-fellow bookmaker, Clara, suggested renting a place for a month-long artist’s retreat. We found a little cottage near Angers (more on that later) and promised to meet there in the beginning of May. So, here it is:

The timing couldn’t have been more perfect. I had 3 months worth of great people and experiences to reflect on. I had a chance to catch up on emails and began to prepare my fall/winter schedule (searching for teaching and music gigs). We enjoyed long walks, interesting talks (it was fun to see someone from home way over here), cooking our own meals, watching French T.V., reading books, making cozy fires and sleeping alot.

I even got to paint a little…

Into the Alpes: Art Makers

Annie Fain — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 10:46:35 +0000

Since I am on the search for artists as well as musicians and dancers, I was happy to come upon Miene Mathon and Alexis Nouailhat while visiting Aime.

They were both incredibly generous, inviting me to their homes (Meine gave me lovely tea and berry pie and Alexis had me for lunch with his family) and openly answering my many questions about their lives.

Miene lives part-time in Chaillol and part-time in Paris, where she works. She specializes in a variety of mediums: mask making, painting and creating sets for theater. If you are in France and interested in taking a mask making workshop at her awesome house in Chaillol you can find the details here:http://mienemathon.eklablog.com/

Aime’s friend, Bernadette, took me to market with her one morning which is where I met Alexis. He is a watercolor painter-traveler-naturalist and has a permanent gallery of his work at his house. Of course, I loved seeing his studio and hearing his story of how he makes his living from traveling (Nepal is his favorite), watercoloring throughout his trip and then handing everything over to his editor/publisher who creates books for sale. He has been making art professionally since he was around 15 years old and is incredibly prolific.

I like that his work ranges from mountains and landscapes to caricatures of local musicians (Aime being one) and cartoon-type scenerios with animal personalities. He clearly has a good sense of humor.

Later, Alexis invited me to visit a goat farm where they make chevre (unfortunately I was so absorbed I completely forgot to take pictures) and on a mountain walk. He knew about every plant and animal we encountered. I remain in complete awe of the huge variety found in nature across the planet.

As a naturalist, Alexis was the perfect person to introduce me to some of the natural ecology of the high Alpes. He showed me the coucou and the parachute bird (it flies high in the sky, drops its wings and dives straight down making a dropping parachute sound as it falls…amazing!). Below are frog eggs.

After the walk we had a lunch of rabbit (that they raised themselves), salad, cheese, bread and home-made kombucha! They have a huge garden in the front of their house and animals everywhere. It reminded me of home.

French Food Intermission!

Annie Fain — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 06:13:12 +0000

Howdy there! I think it’s time for a short intermission to continue to honor the crazy-good food here. Festival #2 will be next time.

NOTE: If you receive these entries via email and you were unable to view the videos in the last post you can go to this link: http://afainbooks.com/blog/2010/05/15/boulegan-lostal/ to see it directly on my website. The post is named “Boulegan l’Ostal.”

Now for some food!

Festival #1: Boulegan l’Ostal

Annie Fain — Sat, 15 May 2010 22:23:56 +0000

The “fun” that “began,” referred to in the last post was not a hot Frenchman (or whatever else might have passed through your mind…and I’m sure that was one of the strongest possibilities…but hey, it is still very likely to happen!), but two weekends with festivals back to back. The first was called Boulegan l’Ostal and was in the town St. Jean du Gare in the southeastern region of France.

Polo and Nadine are very used to packing, unpacking and repacking for festivals. (Their level of efficiency is impressive.) We picked up their friend Valerie (an American who has live in France for over 20 years and has a wonderful puppet/performance company called La Cie du Beau Sauvage in which Polo performs as well) and her son’s girlfriend, who was as sweet as pie, and went on our way.

After braving the up-high, narrow, on-the-very-edge-of-the-edge-curvy roads typical to Ardeche we stopped to take a break (faire une pause) and have lunch: bread made by Nadine, avocado, soy-cheese spread, various regular cheeses and green tea.

We arrived in St. Jean du Gare, squeezed into a parking spot and with instruments in hand started to wander the streets which had been taken over by musicians and dancers alike.

Polo and Nadine had put me on the list as a performing musician which meant that I had a tag that hung around my neck that allowed me food and drink for the weekend (a wonderful surprise for a budget traveler like myself). They had been hired to create jam sessions in the cafes and restaurants wherever and whenever they wanted. We played for hours and hours. (This is also when I really started to get the hang of Polo’s crazy tunes.)

Though there is obviously lots of music and dance at Boulegan l’Ostal it is especially known for being a gathering of luthiers (instrument makers). There was a big room packed with booths of instruments as well as people trying instruments. And I tell you what, when those instruments happen to be hurdy gurdies, accordions and the French version of bag-pipes being played all at once, you kind of wish you had earplugs.

Here is a short video of some young guys playing pipes together:

That night, everyone migrated to a big, beautiful building that used to be a school. It is now the perfect head quarters for the night time jamming and dancing for the festival. As you can see in the picture below, it was just a little bit crowded.

This is an Irish jam…

It’s a little hard to tell, but everyone in this picture is dancing. They are linked elbow to elbow in long caterpillar lines doing a simple (and therefore meditative) dance that comes from Brittany. It’s beautiful to watch all the kabillions of caterpillars slowly working their way around each other.

Needless to say, after such a long day we crashed around 2am. Here is breakfast time (bread, confiture, tea and chocolate!):

More dancing…

A few more tunes and we headed back home…

Emolyn Knits

Annie Fain — Wed, 27 May 2009 13:31:38 +0000

My dear little sister (she’s not that little any more) has created her own blog called, Emolyn Knits: Handmade, Custom Designed Knitwear. She is an up-and-coming, second generation knit garment designer and her work is lovley! (We grew up on a small sheep farm with a mother whose profession is spinning, knitting and natural dying; clearly it rubbed off on Emolyn)

This last year she’s been taking on some pretty large projects; the most intensive being a custom-fit knitted dress with a hood.

As many of you artists out there understand, sometimes it takes a while before your destined craft form finds you. This appears to be it for her. It’s a wonderful thing to see.

You may run into her knitting away on the subway in NYC. If you do, tell her howdy from her big sis.