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| Rob Gove's bear |
ANON....
About 40 yeas ago, I met a sculptor and was very impessed when I visited his house in Santa Rosa. All his furniture consisted of large rouinded stones ! I mean places to sit and small tables to set your wine glass or beer on.
Robert Gove was commissioned to do a full-size bear for the new Shopping Center ',
'Montgomery Village'. He did little research but held to his concept that children would like it.
I was discussing it with an architect friend one evening and he mentioned the 'bear' and discovered that most thought Benni Bufano ( A local artist) had done it. I then went to scope it out and found no reference to any sculptor around the piece .
I then was curious and found that there was no sign of the perpertrator around .After several weeks , calls, etc. I tracked down Goves manager in San Francisco. I discovered Rob , who must be in his '80's by now, had a Studio in Carrarra, Italy. After many tries trying to contact any of the owners of the project, I talked with Rob and indeed he was just thinking of putting his name near the bear, after 40 years! I contacted his graphcis friend who had designed a bronze plate to identify the artist after so many years of silence. At that point, I dropped out of the project, even if I disliked the identifying plate.
I was a bit put off by the fact when I had read about about Gove in Nationioal Goergaohic, who had a Studio in Carrara only a month of so before I could have stopped for a bit as I had just been by Cararra on the train from Milan to Pisa. I could have stopped by to say "Hello".
.By the way, any child who does not want to sit on the bear must be some kind of misfit, as there always seems to be somone's on it's back. But at least we'll know who the artist was.
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| Auges Morte |
drove to AIX EN PROVENCE (From Nice)
5/27/99 - Dinner at La Deaux Garcons
since 1672. Great bottle of wine (‘95 La Coste). Drink tables are
round but when they switch (about 8:00 PM Europe time) to dinner mode
they fit a square table top over it, add tablecloth- viola!
Dinner!. We both ordered poulet (chicken), but cooked different.
It’s always a crap shoot when you’re ordering when you don’t have a clue what
it all means. We counldn't figure out what part of the chicken we were eating.
.
For all you tree huggers, check out the giant old sycamore trees
lining this ancient street. They have paving all around them except for about a
six square foot of area and that is either cobbled or paved with a very porous
type of asphalt that one can walk on. Tree drip line? About 30 feet
out. As an example, in the USA that would wipe out all the wonderful sidewalk
restaurant, even if they were allowed on public property. These
restaurant have been here under the trees for 30/40 years.
Next time, buy a phone card as some telephones don’t even have a
coin slot. This was before i-phone was invented..
Our car rental was really cheap, about $160 a week for both France
and, Italy. Be sure to get A/C next time. Insurance provided by credit
card.
So many roundabouts one gets dizzy sometimes. Joy is a real asset
when it comes to navigating, at least in Europe. She has her little strip we
made that shows kilometers & miles so we know exactly what roundabout
to change direction on. We very seldom got lost & usually got back on
track finally. Like going into Aix in Provence which is a big city (150k), We
follow “Centre Ville” signs. If we get lost we keep going around the Roundabout
until we pick out a sign that says “Centre Ville”, before too long Joy noticed
our hotel on the left! We pulled into a driveway but a car was already parked
there at a gate so I backed out onto the busy street and tried to park in a too
small space. Finally Joy got out and stopped cars and buses so I could back out
again in order to go around the roundabout again to renew the attack on the
gate. That time we made it & got in to park our car. We thought it was
a small hotel but here was a 10 story building. Well, the first two floors was
the hotel, the rest were apartments.
05-28-99 TGV Marseille
(Train) to NICE
The conductor, when checking our tickets checked our
wine bottle to ascertain whether we were drinking a quality wine. Well, he
seemed satisfied. “Bon vin”.He was happy!.
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| Lamont.. Defender of the Arts |
PARIS May 15
Arrived at Charles de Gaulle Airport early morning, cool,
cloudy, misty. Trying to avoid the one stretch 13 hour flight we opted to stop
at Kennedy in New York to break it up a bit. In theory this is a great idea. In
actuality, it sucks, the gates were too far apart..
Our system now is to
take the Air France Bus to the Arc de Triumph Then
taxi to our hotel , which was Hotel Solferino this time. Ouspensky lived
here in the late 20's and probably in our room as it was the largest in the
hotel. It has one of those coffin elevators that only holds one person &
bag. Has a wonderful crypt where petit dejeuner is served, The best we ever had
in France.
Wanted to see IM Pei’s Louvre again so when in when line was
short we went in and had a sandwich & wine at one of the cafes inside. We
found a store that had Joy’s infernal fly swatters and she bought her usual
half dozen. Since each one came in a box we had to find a trash can outside to
get rid of them, the boxes.
We went to the Gare de Nord to get our reservations on the
Thalys fast train to Amsterdam. As we were sitting at a counter talking to the
clerk I had my day bag with my purse in it. I had just put in in the bag when I
needed it again, but when I reached in, it was gone! Gone! There was a black
cleaning lady working around and we determined it was her. In cahoots with the
woman we were talking to? Probably. We got a hold of the police and walked over
to their office with all five of them where I used their phone to cancel my
credit cardss. Since I had lost my Passport, we had to spend a day in Paris at
the American Embassy getting a replacement.
Joy will fortunately never let me forget this incident, believe me.
AMSTERDAM
Went up to
Amsterdamen and had a few great days around the canals and in Rookies smoking
bar again. Joy got the middle aged urge to buy a diamond so we checked around
at a few places as this town is famous for diamond cutting. She’s looking for a
green one if you can believe it. Fortunately, no luck. It’s her birthday (Which
I forgot!) and I guess she considers diamonds something special. Visited the
fine building by the architect Berlage done about 1900. Fine detailing and
structural stuff. Originally a stock exchange, it’s now a museum. They have a
marvelous Maritime Museum there, complete with an old sailing vessel to crawl
around on and fantasize how it was to sail to the Malaccas in the 16th century.
Near the train station, there is a large brick structure built in 1916 by the
architect Van der May , as offices for the Maritime Co.. Sculpted figures ooze
out of the brick walls. The heavy wrought iron fence enclosing it is
spectacular. There are so many old 1800 era warehouses that have been converted
to living spaces and apartments. These buildings seem to be almost new, some
containing seven stories. Most old warehouses are very narrow (12 to 20 feet )
yet quite deep due to some foolish tax laws of the time.
There are still some
cast iron Pissiors on the streets, and don’t miss the Homomonument on one of
the canals, in memory of the gays who have died of AIDs.
Only in Amsterdam could you have such far out street lights
and bollards downtown. These appear to be designed by Salvidor . Dali.
We stayed at the
Hotel Mercure, in an attic room with a Velox window. At least there was a lift
as we were on the third floor. We finally got in the spirit of the goofy Dutch language and were Noodlehoggin all over
the place.
Watched some public
works type laying cobblestones with an inlay in white marble of a bicycle lane.
These fellows also wore the ultimate safety shoe, wooden!
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| a Street in Delft |
DELFT
Trained down to Delft, put up at a the small Museum Hotel that had large ceramic sculptures all over
the place. This is another ancient town that has a few canals through it. Of
course we took a boat tour in order to see the canal life, they only recently
cleaned them out and retrieved one thousand bicycles. There are two major
churches here, the Oude Kirk and the Nieuwe Kirk. The old church was built in 1100's while the
new one was finished in 1350. New is a relative term here. They have a
wonderful large square with the old City Hall on one side. This was filled with
a market one of the days, selling everything from flowers to tee shirts.
Needing to do our laundry we asked the young woman concierge where we could
find a Wash & Dry. She said that “We don’t do that here”. That was a big
help but we finally ran across one later that day. The
sign said “Rein-Tex”. Never did know what it meant, but it worked, and they had some rely nifty Meile machines.
Took a couple of day
trips on the train, one to Haarlem (Yes, New York’s was named after this). We
found a fantastic old church(Grote Kerk) from the 1300's with great slabs of basalt
on the floor where the known are buried, including Mozart. This ancient church
had a very unusual roof structure of
stone ribs and timber infill. But best
of all, there was a fantastic ornate organ on one end wall and best of all they
were playing Bach or Buxtahude. We were almost the only ones there except for
this incredible SOUND! It was truly, a religious experience.
Another day tripped
to Keukenhof which has a huge flower show at this time of year. It consists of
many acres of ground that contain giant tulip area, creeks, and several
pavilions, each one containing a type of flower, orchids, daisys, etc. Each
pavilion has a snack bar for food and of course beer & wine. This eased my
pain a little. An original restored operating windmill was fun to climb up on
but the best thing was watching a guy manually carve wooden shoes on a sawhorse
and a clever tool that is jointed and attached to the horse that enables him to
quickly shape the shoe and actually make pairs that fit.
Back in Delt we found
a great little restaurant overlooking a canal. What intrigued us was the
lantern over their door. It was made up of spoons and coke bottles! The
atmosphere and food was on a par with their lantern.
GHENT
Hopped on the
train to Ghent, another ancient walled city. When we got in the taxi at the
train station we were given instructions on how to pronounce the impossible
town’s name. It’s not “Gent” it’s “Gghhheent”, just like you’re about to houk a
logie. I think we finally got it after a few days. Our hotel was across the
street from the old Gravensteen Castle, which started us wondering where the
gravenstien , which started us wondering where the gravenstien
apple came from back home in Sebastopol. This used to be a major seaport in the
1400's but the Amsterdamens somehow cut them off from a direct access to the
sea, although I don’t quite know how.
It was my turn to be
sick so I got a beautiful cold and was miserable for a couple of days while
nurse Rachett fed me hot rum drinks. Of
course chocolate is is the big thing here and Joy was really getting frustrated
trying to find a time when the chocolatier just a few doors down from our hotel
was open. Their hours were not posted and it took her about three days to
finally catch them. Maybe they like to play hard to get. We visited a couple of
really old churches and one had the best stained glass windows that I’ve come
across. The originals have usually been destroyed in one war or another, and
these were very modern but just a perfect fit the window. Outside, a large
group of Russian musicians were giving a free performance, and selling their
CD. They were very good, a classical performance. On a nearby corner, a jazzman
was blowing his tenor sax in a very professional Coltrane manner, elucidating a
few Guilders(or whatever they use in Belgium) from my pocket, for sure. I
sometimes get over generous as I really appreciate hearing good jazz as I don’t
often get the chance, anymore.
Time to return to
Paris and meet up with the Dodsons but got tangled up in the problem of the
double language of the Belgians. It exists due to the fact that the little
country has been overrun by the Dutch and French so many times, they have
virtually adopted both languages. Ones called the Walloons, the other Flemish.
As our train approached Brussels, the station was shown on a LCD screen on the
end of our car but it kept changing from Brussels Central to Bruxelles Midi. We
consulted our maps but couldn’t figure out which statio to get off on. It
finally came to light as we pulled into the station as we noticed each
alternate platform had a different name on it, however, the same station in
different languages. Jeez, it sometimes gets stressful.
We laid over for a
few hours in order to see the fabulous Maison St. Cyr by the 22 year old
Architect Gustave Straven. We finally
took a taxi to see it and I did a couple of sketches of it. It’s only 12 feet
wide and three stories but a true masterpiece of the Art Nuevo period of late
1800's. We also visited Victor Horta’s house and marveled at the iron work.
Nearby we found the Hotel Ciamberlani by
Paul Hankar, a protoge of Horta. It had fine proportions but best was the
scrafitti, a form of decoration in the stucco, similar to frescoe, but of an
abstract design. A few years ago I had picked up a print of a bearded architect
leaning over his drafting table, it was a kind of add for Hankar, I guess. I
didn’t know of him until I found a reference of Horta. It was fun connecting
the two. However, next time I want to
bus out to Waterloo to see where that beast Napoleon was finally routed by
Wellington. This town was actuall a seaport via
the canals in the 1400’s but got
cut off by one of the Dukes in charge.
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| At Musee 'd Orsey |
PARIS
Back in Paris we
checked in at the Hotel Lille on the Left Bank (Rive Gauche) with it’s coffin elevator,
so we took turns getting up to our room. This had a wonderful crypt where we
had our breakfast. Our friends the Dodsons
were there also so it was time to stop at Harry’s bar again for the classic
Martini. Here’s a place that doesn’t ask if you want gin or dry as they just do
it right, a little vermouth as some of us don’t like straight gin. Was it this
time
Bill & I received our “Barfly Pins” while the girls got
a postcard of Harrys? We went to the Samaritaine Department store near the
Louvre as I was short on hankies. We never could find such a thing but did run
across some excellent suspenders. They were about the same price as in US so I
bought two. They have a great lunch spot on the roof of the store. Cheap and
the view superb.
Our Hotel had a tiny
bar in the lobby run by the concierge. Bill spent a lot of time telling the
barman how to make a Martini, the result being a glass of Martini Vermouth with
ice. He hasn’t grasped the concept yet that Europeans don’t drink cocktails.
About this time I received the news that my mother had finally died. She was
95. Fortunately my brother was there to take care of things. We did some
running around in Paris. Had a great lunch at Georges’ Restaurant at Pompidoux
Center.
