A piece I was asked to write for the Fall CU alumni newsletter
On January 26, 2008, I arrived in Pont-Aven. As I stepped off the bus, my shoes met damp cobblestones. Apart from the quaint stone buildings and slate roofs, I was greeted with a lush, dense forest and the constant hum of the Aven River as it passed through the town. I found this place to be beautiful, alien, and lost in time. At that moment, I did not realize that it was here that I would experience some of my most productive time in graduate school.
The fascination with a new setting, a new community of international students, and my very loose grasp of the French language kept me constantly challenged and engaged throughout that spring semester. My mind was filled with ideas and questions as I began to settle in to life within this rural Breton town. While the setting might seem strange for an English-language art school, it was the quality of light and its distance from Paris that originally brought Paul Gauguin here. It is his time in Pont-Aven that has given the town its reputation as a vacation destination and place for local art. The streets are lined with small galleries, shuttered during the off season, but each comes to life in the spring and summer as the town moves from dormant to vibrant life.
This quiet town provided me with a perfect environment to minimize distractions and experiment continuously with new ideas. I had a great deal of encouragement and support from faculty, some of whom helped me film as, dressed in a homemade “space suit,” I dragged a boat through the port, upstream, and through the nearby fields. On another occasion, when the school took a day trip to Carnac, one of the professors helped me collect baguettes from a local bakery so that I was able to film myself creating a miniature field of menhirs (or “standing stones”) at the site. Regardless of my ridiculous costuming and occasionally outlandish performances, I was warmly received and encouraged by the faculty and the surrounding community.
Despite the quiet seclusion of this small town, the semester was far from tranquil. With two major school trips during the semester, the group traveled to Madrid, Barcelona, Paris, and Berlin. In each city, we visited museums, galleries, art fairs, and artist studios. Within the span of a few months, I had seen a great deal of contemporary and canonical artworks.
A little over a year later, I have returned to Pont-Aven. This time, I have arrived not as a student but as a faculty member. This time, instead of Spain, the school will visit the Venice Biennale and then Lyon, France. Later, we travel again to Paris and Berlin. Building on my experience from the Spring of 2008, I know this will be an interesting and eventful semester. With a close-knit group of students, faculty, and staff, I look forward to the new community we will create, even if it is only for a few months this Fall. The experiences we will share will make it a valuable time for all who attend.
