A third volume
“After a phone call, I came here in 2008 with four comic strips to illustrate the “Transfer of Light”, says Faymonville. His first novel, released in 1993, won all the prizes. We met again at the medieval festival in Namur and Bernard was never short of good advice. I came here and left with piles of books that documented me. We then abandoned the idea of a comic book and I illustrated the book.” Today, the third and final volume is released. A colossal work, the first novel to have so magnified the city of Huy.
“I had no trouble saying yes to Thierryexplains Bernard Tirtiaux. Written history no longer belongs to us, it is a gift we give to others. The best goldsmiths in the West were found in Huy. I came to breathe the streets, like rue des Fouarges. There is also a wealth of information provided by the historian Léopold Génicot. I walked several times in Huy, but also in the Hoyoux valley and at the Château de Modave. The story of the “Passeur de Lumière” has advanced the way I look at my own stained glass windows. It was writing this book that opened my sensitivity. I try to share it. I placed a rose window here, at the Martinrou Farm, in the chapel that my grandfather built. It lights up the early morning. Rather than saying that I am going towards the light, I would say that it is the light that calls me.”
His hobbit house
And the artist takes us into his world: his garden, his house, his workshop or even his bubble house, also called knitting house. A modular home designed in a rounded shape which is intended to be an artists’ den. “It is made with plaster and glass wool, explains Bernard Tirtiaux. The interior is designed practically, there is no wasted space. We imagined this house with friends, we had a lot of fun building it. It looks like a hobbit house. It could be a good alternative to the housing crisis we are currently experiencing.”
In the workshop, water is another theme to which the sculptor is very attentive. Thus, the artist moved from stained glass to the embedding of buckets of water to offer a magnificent allegory of water, the property of humanity, of water that cannot be stolen, of water that makes us to live and which becomes a good so threatened by pollution, reduction or even disappearance in certain areas of the world. There is humor in this sculpture by Bernard Tirtiaux which thus relays the call launched by Riccardo Petrella ten years ago, repeated by the movement he launched, the Agora of the Inhabitants of the Earth.
Water, sacred…
“How can we entrust to a small group of financial operators, wealthy ones in addition, driven by the appetite for short-term speculative returns, the responsibility of “regulating” the protection, valorization and use of water, a sacred good because it is essential and unsubstitutable for life and living together? asks Bernard Tirtiaux.
Then in the workshop, we observe a sculpture by Nivard. There was talk of a statue of Nivard in front of the Collegiate Church of Huy, but the project did not materialize. “Nivard has his roots here, I even gave birth to him in Chassepierre, I came to walk the streets to look for his presence. There had been talk of installing it on Place Verte but the place was too cramped. Alderman Joseph George then had the idea of the Collegiate Church, but without follow-up. “
The two authors will come this Saturday to Huy to present their works: the third volume of the illustrated version of “Passer de Lumière” by Thierry Faymonville and “L’Écorché”, a new book by Bernard Tirtiaux and “Belgiques”, a collection of short stories.
> Book Morning at the Huy cultural center, Saturday December 14 at 10:30 a.m. Free meeting. Possibility of finishing with a raclette (€17, to be reserved before December 12). 085/21 12 06
