Art Girl takes a squat

Well, she finds a squat.

The Aftersquat. It's an artist commune on 59 Rue de Rivoli. It was one of those things Art Girl ambled into when she was wandering around Paris. Sometimes good things come to those who have no internal navigational compass.

The Aftersquat is a 5-story series of thirty art studios built around an insanely-painted staircase. You can check out their website here. Artists apply for studio space, and if accepted have around six months to create in this colorful, lively and artsy- shmartsy wonderland. The public can amble around and chat up the artists every afternoon but Monday. The squat is a hub of activity, hosting concerts and gallery shows and creaking under the feet of the swarm of visiters that traverse it's old wooden floors. I was mostly entranced by the staircase, a piece of art in and of itself. The bustling warmth of this studio, vivid with color and chock-full of art makes it a seriously cool spot. I should get lost more often.

Art Girl looks out from her studio...

...and sees this. Life rocks.

Art girl gets hitched over a pile of zucchini

"You are my wife," said the zucchini man as he passed me a zucchini last Sunday at the weekly outdoor market.

And like that, I found my husband. Or rather, he found me.

Stunned, I turned away from the vegetable stand and be-lined for Cheese Woman. Decked out in a silver bun and smelling of well-aged Roquefort, I figured the flirting potential between the two of us was moderate to low. I needed to clear my head.

After ordering a massive hunk of Camembert and a brick of parmesan (perhaps overkill, but when in France) I realized I was still clenching the zucchini in my left hand. I unzipped my grocery sack, and deftly chucked the zucchini into its bowels. With equal finesse I then proceeded to pay cheese lady with an English five pound note, drop my wallet and spill my sack of tangerines.

"Ce sont pas euros," Cheese Lady stated in a matter-of-fact-I-eat-Brie-like-it's-my-job sort of voice as I lunged for my wallet and watched my oranges disperse to every corner of the market. Durn.

The thing is, I'm not ready to be a wife. I'm not prepared to commit to a life as Mrs. Zucchini Man, whipping out zucchini pancakes every morning, blending zucchini smoothies around midday and baking up zucchini casseroles every night before I crawl between zucchini-printed sheets on a humble yet well-kept zucchini farm. I'm twenty years old for crying out loud.

Courgette is the french word for zucchini. I learned this from my future husband, when I first ambled up to his stand.

"Bonjour," I'd said.

"Where are you from?" he'd asked. Ugh. I hate that after two syllables frenchies can tell I'm from Mars. He could have at least waited until I murdered the pronunciation of courgette before he pegged me as a tourist and inquired about my lineage.

"Je suis americaine," I replied. He was tan with dark hair and dark eyes. Almost tall dark and handsome, minus the four inches needed to meet the first qualifier.

"Ah, je suis espanol," he said smiling. "You are here for the week?"

"Non, pour six mois," I said, bursting into a grin. Every time I say that I feel like i'm taking a bath in chocolate syrup. But no time for food metaphors now because here I was with Zucchini Man and I needed to buy a zucchini and — not knowing the word for zucchini — this was going to be a struggle.

"Je voudrais une chose comme un concombre, mais plus dense," I ordered. A dense cucumber, really Phoebs, that's the best you can do? 

"Un concombre mais plus dense," Zucchini Man repeated. "Ummmm, ici?"

Bam. Zucchini. Working off the shaky scaffolding of a request for "dense cucumber," Zucchini Man was a telepathic guru. He was already outperforming Garlic Man, who had given me shallots when I'd asked for a petit ongion, which he finally switched out for the garlic after I shook my head and said "non, quelque chose qui a un odeur plus fort," something with a stronger smell. Never before has grocery shopping so closely resembled a round of twenty questions.

"Une courgette," zucchini man said as passed the zuke from one hand to another. "Pour toi" he added as he held up a clementine and passed it to me. It was then that he told me I was his wife. It was then that I'd bolted.

With British Pounds rather than her native Euro currency, Cheese Woman was thoroughly disgruntled. I was equally disgruntled because she had cut me off a slice of artisanal Camembert that probably cost half my inheritance.  And I wasn't ready to get married. And my organic tangerines were on the ground.

"Un moment," I told Cheese Woman. She could just let her cheese age for a few minutes while I found an ATM.

Fate is a fickle friend. And she was feeling especially fickle today, as she had placed the ATM directly in front of the zuke stand. I wasn't ready to interact post-proposal. I needed some time to process. Fate wasn't listening. So I got to awkwardly make peripheral eye contact with Zucchini Man, grunt in response when he shouted out "La semaine prochaine!" See you next week!, and smile out of one side of my mouth as I passed the zucchini stand a third time on my way back to the chaste aura of cheese woman's stall.

Switched Cheese Woman out for euros, yanked my shopping bags onto my shoulder, and headed for home to cook up some Sunday lunch. Anything but a zucchini smoothie would hit the spot.

Art Girl dates french man who hasn't heard of the Mona Lisa

The date was going so well.
Until I told him I had been at the Louvre earlier in the day, and had seen the Mona Lisa.
"Qui?" he asked, his tone casual.
"The Mona Lisa," I said. The music in the bar was loud, he probably just hadn't heard me.
"Qui?" he asked again, smiling this time. "C'est un de tes amis?"
I gulped. He'd just asked if the Mona Lisa was one of my friends.
"Non, c'est le Mona Lisa, la peinture." Only the most famous painting of all time...(!!!!). "Tu ne la connait pas?"
"Ummm, Mona Lisa? Non," he said, still smiling.

Deeply concerned. Art Girl does NOT date men who have not heard of the Mona Lisa. And the fact that this guy was French was adding insult to injury. I excused myself to the bathroom, taking my purse, plotting my subtle escape through a sidedoor or backdoor or hell, a trap door.

Peed. Didn't find any doors besides the main door. Returned to date to tell him I really must go. He was looking at his cell phone. You french-poser-head-in-the-clouds-art-ignoramous.  I sat down on the stool next to him, ready to bolt.

"La Joconde!" he spouted, eager, holding up a photo of that famous smiling lady on his phone. "Tu parle de la Joconde, mais oui, bien sur je lui connais," he said, chuckling.

I sighed a deep sigh of relief. He did know the Mona Lisa, she just has a different identity on this side of the Atlantic.  French boy could order another round.

Art Girl encounters fascist dictator disguised as painting teacher

Every Monday at 5:15 p.m. I lug my bright red portfolio and bulging bag of acrylic paints onto the metro and make my way to the Sorbonne's art building. Forty five minutes later, usually disgruntled and undoubtedly disheveled, I arrive in the painting studio. It's a tall room with unfinished walls, large tables and several sinks. When you enter the room two things will catch your attention right away — the presence of a nude in the corner, posing languidly on one of the painting tables, and the heavy scent of oil paint on oil paint on oil paint. While I am positive the french stance on nudity is more lenient than in America, I am also quite sure their stance on ventilation is equally relaxed.

There are around twelve students in my class, give or take the three breaking for a cigarette in front of the building at any one time. The teacher, Monsieur Dulom, is a man in his fifties, with longish dark brown hair, perfectly round black-framed glasses, and a clinically strong aversion to saying anything positive about any one's art.

In fact, never in my life have I encountered such a critical art teacher. For three hours he holds his hand behinds his back and saunters from one student to the next. The room is silent, but for the quiet swish of brush strokes, and Monsieur Dulom's low voice.

"Degoutant," he says, after looking at my painting for several minutes. "Les coleurs sont degoutant." (Translation: disgusting, your colors are disgusting). He then slips into a five minute description of the problem, gesturing with his arms, weilding grand metaphors. This is where my already lose grasp on understanding french loses complete hold...I watch him with big eyes, follow his hands as he waves them from the ceiling to a particular spot on my painting. His voice rises and falls, he sits, he stands. Then the room falls silent again. "Tu comprends?" he asks."Oui, merci," I say, in fact understanding little except that he is most definitely not pleased. I do however understand what he says to the next student, someone I consider to be cranking out Michelangelo-caliber portraits on a regular basis. "Ah, c'est la merde," Dulom says. This is shit.

The first day of class I was proudly setting out my new french art supplies — a big pad of acrylic paper, large tubes of acrylic paint, my pack of sleek new brushes and a pallet knife — when Monsieur Dulom strutted over.

"Qu'est ce que ce?" he asked as he rubbed a piece of my canvas paper between his two fingers.

"Uhhh...papier?" I replied. He pulled his glasses down to the tip of his noise and peered at me with a look of deep disdain.

"Do you know of any famous artists who painted on canvas paper?" he asked me, in french. I nodded no. "That's because there aren't any," he said. "This may be easy to carry on the subway, but you need to buy better materials, you need canvas." Before he turned he pulled his glasses back up his nose and said "If you don't take yourself seriously, no one else will."

In other words, welcome to painting class.

Art Girl Sees Water Lilies, Bursts into Tears

So that happened.

Let's just say, it has been quite a week here in Paris. Finding an apartment was no easy task — after visiting ten different apartments dispersed throughout Paris, alternatively conversing and clashing with various landlords, becoming hopelessly lost on the subway, hopelessly lost on the streets and hopelessly lost in the grocery store — I've been teetering on the emotional fringe.

It's been an incredibly eye-opening (and frustrating) experience to realize that I can't express myself to the fullest extent. Sometimes in conversation, my ideas feel trapped in my head. I think of a joke or a thought I'd like to voice, and merde (that's shit in Parisian), I can't! I can eeeu and uum or even attempt charades, but sometimes I truly just cannot communicate clearly.

A little of that is ok. But it builds up. And today was my first day of class at the Sorbonne. Operating on five hours of sleep, I took the metro into town. Google Maps estimated 15 minutes of travel time. I used the mathematical operation I've developed to calculate how long it will take me to get from point A to point B here:

(estimated GoogleMaps travel time) x 4 = (Phoebe tries to navigate paris travel time)

My calculations regurgitated the number 60. So I left the apartment at 8 o clock for my first class — 'History of Patrimony' from 9 to 10:30. Turns out not even my extraordinarily generous time estimation formula wasn't generous enough this time around. Finally found the bloody class at 10:25, in a building a full eight blocks away from where I thought I was going to school. Loving this monday morning thing. 

I think I could have held it together if the rest of the day had been filled with croissants and Mona Lisas and long romantic walks along the Seine with a handsome french hand model. Instead, it was stacked with a three hour Contemporary Art lecture I understood about ten percent of, a grump at the grocery store, pouring rain, a head-ache inducing lack of coffee, and another failed venture into the labyrinth of the Parisian metro. Man, I was on the brink.

And when I stepped into the circular room on the first floor of the Musee de l'Orangerie, something in me cracked. It was breathtaking— a crisp open space embraced by four large water lily panels by Claude Monet. There was something about the silence and pervading sense of absolute calm in that room that contrasted so strongly with the last ten days I've spent in Paris. For the first time, I felt like I could take a deep breath. Like I could sigh. Like I could just lay it all down for a few minutes. So I cried — but it's not like they had to put up a 'Caution: Wet Floor' sign up after I left or anything.

Monet created 'Water Lilies' after World War I, and donated the work and space to the French people. It was intended as a space of nature, tranquility and contemplation — a breath of air and a space to think in the middle of a city racked by stress and stimuli. In 1909, when Monet was proposing the project, he wrote "Nerves strained by work would relax in its presence, following the restful example of it's stagnant waters, and for he who would live in it, this room would offer a refuge for peaceful meditation in the midst of a flowering aquarium." Two vestibules and eight panels comprise the whole, the panels depicting time passing from sunrise till sunset.

When you first step into the Water Lily room, your eye may sweep the field of blue that is the wall. You may notice the colors first — the deep purples, the range of greens and blues, the shades of rose. Then a small dab of white will catch your eye, and your gaze will dance from one lily to the next, skimming the blues of the water, gracing the greens of the reflection, fluttering along with the sunlight on the water's surface. You may choose to sit in the middle of the room and let the work swallow you whole. Or you may choose to walk around the room, your feet moving along with passages of color and light. You may stay a long time, you may take a few deep breaths and move to another exhibit. You may think of water lilies when you close your eyes. You may wonder if sky and water and plants and light are more than the disparate elements we make them out to be, are instead a harmonic of blues.

In any case, the flowering aquarium will be there for you next time you need it.

Take the virtual tour of Les Nympheas

Art Girl Takes Paris by Storm

Wow I am one lucky bastard, I think to myself as the plane wheels land on the tarmac.

Five months in Paris? My karma is not near good enough to have earned me this. But here I am, and could not be more excited for the adventures to come.

My name is Art Girl. Well, that's not actually what my parents officially christened me, but they did manage to instill in me a deep mistrust of all things cyber and a hesitance to reveal my address, social security number and mother's maiden name to the internet community at large. So Art Girl — there you have it — and good luck finding that one on the public records.

My parents also engrained in me a deep mistrust of urban dwellers. Old women innocently asking me for directions, young children begging for change, men with headphones on the sidewalk — all potential pickpockets, muggers, and potential wearers of six inch knives strapped to their thighs. I live in Salt Lake City, Utah, which is, in case you've never been, is about as classic white suburbia as they come. Think labrador retrievers, lemonade stands, and PTA meetings. So you can imagine when my taxi dropped me off in the center of Paris in my thirty-hours sans sleep state of semi-consciousness, I was a little — out of my element? It wasn't like taking a putting a fish-bowl fish in the ocean and watching it flap around for a few minutes before it instinctively headed towards the coral reef. It was like airdropping a gerbil into the middle of the Atlantic Ocean with three unweildy bags tied to its legs and saying 'swim to shore'. I'm the gerbil in that scenario, in case the metaphor was getting a bit too off target.

Contex: Despite having taken two years of french in college, I do not speak french. French people raise their eyebrows at my accent (Au revoir =  'Our-ree-vore'). I have decided conjugating verbs is a luxury my french iterations will never enjoy ('i to go to subway you to come?'). I am, however, an excellent devourer of croissants, a lover of wine, and have had an Eiffel keychain on my backpack since the third grade, so figure these deeply-rooted french ties compensate for my language shortcomings.

Art Girl has yet to see any art, but soon her cot will be planted in the Louvre, sketchbook squeezed under armpit, charcoal in hand, ready to spend some quality time with that reputable lady Mona Lisa.