Arts Lab 6.0: Ella Maillard - Month 3

This report is going to be particularly short because unfortunately I had to come back to France right after the first MAF exhibition to accompany my family through difficult times. But here is a small review of what happened since I last sent news. 

My two last weeks in Târgu Frumos were very happy ones because as Christmas was coming I was starting to feel really cozy at home and especially in our room. I had a lot of fun with the Secret Friend envelopes as it meant an excuse to craft little items for Katrina and the opportunity for me to print “the guy” for Luca (by the time the report is published I think sharing this info is okay, yes Luca, I’m the “someone <3” who started “the guy” thing and Sona continued while I was away). I will remember the time before the exhibition as the Slova Pacana era, we dived into this Russian gang series right after the residency in Petru Rareş (it matched the vibe) and started humming the music whenever it would cross our mind (which means a lot). We also gave Luca a haircut and had late night bathroom sessions to show off our hidden talents. 

This half month is also associated to a lot of weekend dancing in Iaşi for me, which gave rise to some improbable anecdotes and unexpected encounters. Out of these let’s remember above all meeting Christian after some bar muddle (…). We befriended him and he came all the way to Târgu Frumos the following week to see the exhibition. Of course, the train is still an almost daily protagonist of my life in Romania. In this specific context, it features record races to the station and the carriage glass becoming the extension of our bathroom mirror for our last makeup adjustments and vain preoccupations. During these night rides, I am not alone as I usually am, and if we’re lucky, we can witness the soft cascading of Rahaf’s hair out of its curling bun. In the early morning, all you can see is the white cross of the church glowing in the fog. 

Exhibition means personal artwork days. This time I decided to do more ceramics so I could enjoy the studio. I spent a Friday in the forest, right after our visit to Ruginoasa. I brought some clay and proceeded to make negatives of the barks of the trees to highlight their print, because nature has as much power to mark us as we humans have to stamp her. I stayed the whole day in the snow, listening to the cracking of the trunks, the wind and the last birds. I was amazed to grasp the flight of two deers in the white. It seemed that my hiking shoes – with whom I meander relentlessly these past years – were a bit too tired to isolate my feet from the winter. My wet socks became a ten days flu and compelled me to regular “inGalations”. It was all worth it though, and I would do it again and again without hesitation. In the studio we did kiln after kiln and I fell in love with the feeling of the just-fired-ceramics on my cold hands. 

One last natural episode: Nikola and I went to the hills again because we remembered seeing a shepherd there and wanted to ask for some wool for Nikola’s painting. We walked in the mud but no sheep to be seen, the herd was probably inside since the first snow. But as we were searching in the slopes, we kept hearing the echo of a loud “beeeeeeeeeeh”. It was calling us, no doubt. So we retraced our steps and came back to the wood deposit we crossed on our way. There, a man on a phone and a little cabin with some smoke slipping away from the chimney. The men inside must have seen us, the door opened on two smiling guys. After chitchatting in Romanian while waiting for the third buddy to finish his call (he was the owner of the animals), we went with him in the stable, helped him to hold the sheeps (one black, one white) and to cut a handful of wool with giant scissors. We couldn’t believe how lucky we were. Then, we were invited to share the potatoes they were cooking on the wood-burner. On our way back to Act House we couldn’t stop smiling. 

And then, eventually, the exhibition. A lot of noise in one room, but a lot of joy too. 

And then Iaşi with my big backpack, and Katrina’s birthday. 

And then some sleep on the airport floor, and then the night plane. 

And then my first footstep in Paris after two years, landing right in front of Eminescu statue and the Romanian Orthodox church, as if I had just teleported. 

Report written by Ella Maillard, she's from France and she's one of the 14 volunteers participating in Arts Lab 6.0, a project co-funded by the European Union through the European Solidarity Corps program.