Below is the first draft of my writing about living in the South of France, in Lacoste and how that experience effected me as an artist and as a person. This is only one fifth of what a final version might include but I felt strongly enough about this "as is" to publish this much to the site.

A light in the darkness

The last two days in New York have been very hot. No AC in the apartment. The fans are running on high, like giant hair dryers blowing the heat from corner to corner. Buses slam over steel plates in the street as the water main work drags on. The tremors vibrate through our building and shake me while laying in bed. There is loud music in the street, car alarms, and fights that keep me awake just when I want to rest. This place is about as far from the beauty and serenity of the South of France that I could get. How has it come to be that this is the best place for me and my career as an artist? When I think back to my hasty departure and when I try to collect my thoughts on those times living in France for three years so many experiences and ideas, it seems to hit me all at once, everything calling out to be recognized.


If you decide to become a writer than you have already accepted your medium as language. As an artist your mediums are never as intuitive but they must be transcended as the writer transcends the words on a page. Any art medium (painting, photography, sculpture) has its own language, terms, and structures. These are all confined within the conception of art. Language and Music are more intuitive but art relies heavily on the formation of crutch theories and history. Any artist worth his salt knows that to achieve anything new, to truly transcend the words on a page, the artist must leave behind not only the terms and structures of the medium but they must escape the confined conceptions of art itself.


Sitting here in the kitchen at night the words just stare back at me like my empty plate of pasta, like the empty canvases in my studio as a student. Sitting in my studio studying the grain of the canvas and its patterning, the little hic-ups in it's stitching, I investigated the canvas like a detective trying to get some motivation as to what the painting should become. I wanted to create a canvas that would be as real and as natural as the patterning of colors on a Fall leaf. Leaves were posted all around my studio - I was in awe of their beauty. I never tried to paint them, that was not the point. I didn't want to reproduce their beauty, that would not provide any discovery at all. I wanted to know by what process they had arrived at their patterning, what was the internal logic and purpose that made this leaf what it was? How could I understand the internal logic of this leaf? And how could I understand the purpose of painting? I wanted to create a painting without a hand or brush. It was at this time that I began to question the entire act of painting itself. Moving this stick around with hairs on its end and paint dabbed into the bristles - this was crazy. What was behind this bizarre act of painting that I was imitating without question that gave it validity? Was it the history and tradition of painting, was it the art school factory acceptance of what art was? What was the real purpose of painting? If I could understand that then I could truly create something worthwhile.


For 50K$ the art school curriculum at Cleveland Institute of Art would spell it out for you and I hurried up to get in line. The Bachelor of Fine Arts degree was like a meandering five-year waltz with a bunch of students who simply watched too much MTV and considered themselves "visually oriented". Until the day came when we were released into the wondrous art world with curators and collectors waiting to knock at our door. When that never happened, the learning really began.


The day after graduation I left Cleveland for the South of France. There was a tiny study abroad program that had accepted me as a painting assistant for the Summer and Fall semesters. That was exactly what I needed. The program required that we arrive before the Summer semester in July and for once I was early, an entire month early. The school was situated in the Luberon valley of Provence and from the photography I had seen it promised all the glory and beauty of a Provence that had attracted van Gogh, Picasso and Cézanne to work from its inspiration.


After arriving by train in Avignon, and gibbering some mangled French to find the bus station, I took up all my supplies and belongings and headed for the next bus departing east. The sun bleached walls of Avignon seemed distant although they were right before me. I felt as if my eyes had just opened in the morning and I was taking a look around at the world for the first time. This was already incredible to me, to be in this foreign land, listening to French all around me and reading it in the ads, papers, signs, and at the bus stop "Gare Routiere". The excitement kept me buzzing and awake, although my jetlag and the four hour train ride were now taking full effect, I was only an hour or so from my final destination. I wanted to stay awake all the way there to soak in as much as my eyes could gather. The bus pulled out of the station and we headed out into Provence.


Everything looked new and different, even a license plate looked interesting. As we passed further and further into Provence the landscape became more and more bizarre, not from its natural beauty but from all the odd roadside displays. The large aqua blue florescence of full size pools were displayed upright out of the ground towards the oncoming traffic defying the blasting winds of the Mistral. Large red cows and other unfamiliar company mascots adorned signs on every other store or gas station. After about 40 minutes on the bus I was beginning to wonder where this mystical Provence was. So far it had seemed to be nothing more than a French version of some semi-rural area in Ohio. Now I was getting worried.


Ten minutes later and there were no more roadside stores. Ten minutes after that and there was nothing but fields and an occasional building with terra cotta tiles. From this point on the foothills of the Luberon mountain range became visible we were driving straight into the valley. With a right and left turn alongside a steep cutout ledge of the Limestone foothills we came to Lumieres, my stop. There was no one there to greet me because no one expected me but it didn't matter, I had made it. Gathering all my things together I started out up the hill to Lacoste. There was a sign posted outside the local hardware store that read 'bienvenue en Provence', and I felt that I was the only person that that sign was directed to.


After trekking about a mile uphill, a small white car pulled over and asked if I needed a ride. Lacoste was still another mile or so up the road so I got in. Whisked past fields of lavender and through the perfumed air of Provence we quickly came upon the village. I had no idea where I was and at a loss to tell my ride where to go when suddenly we took a quick right turn up onto a steep cobblestone path that headed directly for an ancient archway. The opening didn't appear to be much wider than the car itself and before I could wince the car slid through its passage at full speed and we were on the other side, scratch free. The driver pulled up to a peak where the path started to descend again and stopped. He directed me to the school office, I got my things out, and he went barreling back down the path into the village.


Standing amidst a sea of stone walls that bent and twisted around me I couldn't believe I was here. I also couldn't believe that some of the walls were still standing. Some buildings were in ruin and overrun with vegetation. There were walls bowing out into the street as if the buildings were formed from flowing waters rather than by human hands. There was no one in the street and I had the feeling of being completely alone in this incredible place.


The doors to every building were closed and as the awe of this place started to wear off I heard the sound of American English from down the path. There were two guys coming toward me and as there gaze struck mine I introduced myself. "HI, I'm Terrence Kelleman the painting assistant." Standing a bit aback as if equally stunned by what he saw Thaddeus replied through his thin round framed spectacles "Well you're a little early. The program doesn't start for about another month." Normally I would have been embarrassed but I had no inclination for apology at the time as my excitement overwhelmed me. "Yeah, I was in Paris and decided to come down early." still beaming through my physical exhaustion and jetlag. Thaddeus introduced himself and introduced me to Serge the all-around-repairman and spokesperson for the Provencal life. Thaddeus gave me a small room where I could crash out and situate myself until the program got started. It had a small cooking stove some left over pots, bowls and a few utensils, "fit for a king", I thought.


Thaddeus asked if I'd like to have dinner with him and I gratefully took him up on the offer. Lacoste didn't have any real restaurants affordable to the student budget and the two cafés only served cheese sandwiches on day old bread for five dollars. Besides the only restaurant in Lacoste was for the British tourists, real Provencal's enjoyed the love of cooking and much of their life revolved around it. Thaddeus treated me to a simple tasteful meal and after a couple glasses of wine I didn't have much left in me. I was quickly waning away in the early night air and all I could do was make my way back downstairs to my room.


That night I fell into a deep sleep and experienced the most surreal dreams laying in the cool Provence night. The dreams were vivid and clairvoyant. There was a beautiful porcelain figurine of a boy placed on a pedestal in a darkly lit room. The only light was from a spot light directly above the figurine. The base was shaking and toppling loosely underneath it. I was frantically trying to steady the base and save the white porcelain figure from breaking, but it was impossible and in each and every attempt to alter the outcome the sculpture broke and was destroyed. The dream deeply disturbed me and I felt that it must be some kind of bad omen of my arrival in France. Why was I dreaming of that? I wanted to ignore it but I couldn't shake the feeling of tragedy and loss. Why did I dream that I couldn't save the sculpture? What did the sculpture represent? Was it my art? Did this mean I would totally fail in my artistic efforts? What was to become of me here in this village? Why did I have such terrible dream my first night in this otherwise beautiful place? As each moment passed I would look for a meaning and just see the figure falling. The entire morning was tinged with regret and hesitation. I decided to write it out in my sketchbook and leave it at that.


After getting settled and dressing I went out to see if I could find Thaddeus or Serge. Walking around in the village again I was astounded by the random complexity of the street walls. There was not one straight angle in the entire village, except for the mayors office. You could not distinguish between where one building began and the other ended. The walls bent and leaned out over the street and within every pile of loose dirt there was some plant peeping out through the stones trying to gather sunlight. Stone staircases led everywhere and the deep infinite blue of the Mediterranean sky was continually overhead. After looking around at the office and other buildings I ventured through a gate and up a stairwell. As I approached the upper section there was a thick overgrowth of weeds and tree branches leaning over the path. Rustling through to the top I turned around to look out over the village and onto the lush fields of the Luberon valley.


The fields stretched out into the distance taking all kinds of angles and shapes colored with green, yellow and lavender. Small scatterings of terra cotta rooftops speckled the landscape and gathered together again to form neighboring villages. The immensity of the sky seemed to draw me in, not flat and monochrome, it had a density that I could feel looking up into the most central point above me. This was the Provence I had seen in pictures and this was the Provence that had given inspiration to so many painters, but it was also so much more than I could appreciate in that one view.



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