flip flop

flip flop

” I lived with my family her in Tahiti when I was four years old, then we went back to France, my Dad was working for a construction company. As an adult I decided to go to Papeete for several weeks, I stayed there eleven years, but working here was not easy, my boss did not help me to be promoted as he initially promised, and then this woman was harassing me, I was in love with her, that did not work out; I went back to “la Metropole.”

When I asked Samuel why he was coming back to French Polynesia, he showed me his flip-flops and said “for that!’. He was smiling but seemed a little bit wistful, with high expectations about this new life on these islands in the middle of the Pacific ocean.

 

reindeer

reindeer

“I have always dreamed of adventure, I have always wanted to come to the USA, and Texas was the image I had of that country, the cowboys…people are cool here, there are relaxed, in the USA no ones judges you on your appearance nor the way you are dressed, unlike in Europe. Every year at Christmas I put the Rodolphe’s Red Nosed Reindeer horns on my huge Ford, and people like it! I am pretty sure that in my previous life I was an American, born and raised in Texas. ”

Chantal is a french mother of five kids, she is full of kindness and generosity, always so optimistic. Chantal’s dream is also to travel all around the world, not knowing where she would be going the day after.

motion

motion

” I hope that people visiting the exhibition will be sensitive to “the story” we are trying to tell them, that they will be feeling emotions while discovering the variety of the creations we are presenting to tell that story. This is the story of “Art in Motion”, full of speed and modernity over the ages.  Art is like a big balloon, full of emotion like the one this little girl shared with us while visiting the gallery today with her Mom; she had a candide look, and seemed to be full of admiration watching the creations of Calder, Miro, Spelletich, Elliott,  Snelling…”

Why did you decide to come to San Francisco to open your art gallery? “SF is a city continuously reinventing itself, everything here is simpler, free. San Francisco is a city always in motion”.

Jules generously shared with me these last weeks the great opportunity to put images on the conception of his gallery and the preparation of the exhibition he will be showing tomorrow. Just like the exhibition’s creations, Jules is a masterpiece,  always “in motion.”

truly alive

truly alive

“My aspirations were to be a writer, but I soon found myself drawn to making sculpture and paintings, which I have done from an early age. I was influenced by travelling in Europe as a child, from seeing great cathedrals and museums, to the festivals in the small German town I lived in. Because my father was in the military, we visited many of the military sites such as the Maginot line and the ossuary of the Verdun memorial, which remains one of my most durable memories from that time. There’s nothing else like it in America, to see a monument that shows the insanity of war so clearly.

Is there a link between what you saw at Verdun France and your creations? “I often credit these experiences as the origins of my interest in mortality, which sometimes makes its appearance in my artwork. Art to me has a power to bring us truly alive, completely alive, and because of this, offers a clear location to consider the possibility of death. The memento mori tradition in art is long: to remind us that we aren’t going to live forever and should make the most of the time we have. History is a death of the shaping moments of our times, and too often, these moments become buried and we no longer look at them. I prefer to seek out the forgotten and ignored, bringing them back into awareness so that we have greater perspective on our own lives.

Marshall is a young artist of the San Francisco Bay Area. I liked his vision of a link between mortality and arts; Marshall’s  creations will be presented at the Jules Maeght Gallery in SF, along with others artists like Pol Bury, Alexander Calder, Kal Spelletich, Tracey Snelling, but also Joan Miro, Kristie Macleod, Clovis Prevost, Herbert Snelling, Vassily Kandinsky…his peers….

curator

curator

“I like to work closely with living artists on special exhibitions and commissions. I love getting close to the artists’ intentions and ideas–I love entering their worlds. Curators help deliver work to the public, they help contextualize and support artists. My passion is to work from the studio to the venue and beyond.”

How did you start working in Arts? “I started working in the Arts as a curator when I was in high school in San Francisco. I had an internship at the San Francisco Fine Arts Museums and I was in charge of the galleries–checking the temperature, the humidity etc…I even got to dust the Rodin bronzes. I would spend hours alone in the empty galleries. The etymology of curate” is “curare” from “to care for” and I have been curating ever since.”

Since I know very little about arts, Natasha took the time to try to share with me her passion for Arts; Natasha is a beautiful curator travelling all around the world as an independent curator “to look at art, I write about it, I teach it and I live and breathe it.” Natasha is co-curator of  the “Art in Motion” Jules Maeght Gallery first exhibition in SF.

 

lumber

lumber

“I took that wooden beam to make it look like redwood. I love wood, it reminds me of my Dad, he had a building company in Davenport Iowa, and I was helping him; One day I saw my Dad furious as his employees just announced him they were leaving the company to go to Costa Rica. I asked these guys why, and they told me they were going there to build a school in a village, and do surfing in the afternoon. That was for me a revelation, that building could also be for the benefit of others, making others happy. I decided I wanted to be a builder as well,  but an artist builder.”

Kal is a famous artist worldwide, based in  San Francisco. His art is shown at the Jules Maeght Gallery , as part of the “Art in Motion” exhibit.