At the Tuilerie Bossy, in Gardanne, we have been an arts and crafts center since 2002 and between 15 to 20 artist-artisans continue or succeed one another there – watchmaker, luthier, floral designer or leatherworker…
“When we knew that the Aix Culture Biennale was opening to Lebanese artists, we wanted to join in“, explains Goulven Delisle, sculptor and president of the association bringing together artists.
Ghassan Salameh, a Lebanese designer and curator based in Marseille, called for applications and the choice fell on Paul Bou Farah, an atypical young artist aged 25 who arrived three weeks ago in residence at Chemin du Moulin du Fort , with a little delay because of the tragedy his country is going through.
Atypical because Paul was, before delving into art, the son and grandson of a farmer, and a science student for two years, “but really, I didn't like it”.
It was in his Beeka plain, on the land of his fathers, that he learned to prune fruit trees and recover wood scraps. These “wasted pieces“, it irritated him, and he learned to cut them, sculpt them, polish them, to contour their veins, to enhance their color.
Semi-precious stones inlaid
He brought back from Lebanon some examples of the tools he created – ladles, spoons, bookmarks, hair clips – so many recycled, unique objects, the story of which he told yesterday during the Christmas weekend open to the public at the Tuilerie. “Here is peach wood, hazel wood, here are the enzymes that colored the wood of the decomposing tree“. In the sleeves, he has inlaid semi-precious stones, lynx eye or quartz.
When he arrived in Gardanne, spontaneously, collaborations were established between Paul and other tile artisans. As with Anne Larouzé who works the earth by playing with the effects of materials that she knows how to give to the clay, here, by making it lichen, there, movements of dunes. With Paul, she drew the veining in homage to the vessels irrigating the erect tree, the young Lebanese tried his hand at modeling the sap…
