A great wind of forests and freedom blows on the Meuse
About the Vent des Forêts contemporary art center, which can be visited all year round in the open air in the Meuse, along agricultural and forest paths.
I am so happy to read an article about Vent des Forêts in Artpress that I absolutely have to tell you about this wonderful Meuse art gallery to explore in hiking boots, between fields and forests! Yes, Vent des Forêts is an open-air contemporary art center, established in my native Lorraine since… 1997! Some 150 works of art can now be discovered along the 45 km of marked hiking trails: new ones are born every year, always created in situ, while others gradually disappear, depending on the ability of the materials to withstand the Lorraine winters.
It is a destination that has enchanted many of my summers since I first discovered it in the local press. It is also a treasure hunt destination that has allowed me to reconcile many recalcitrants with contemporary art, thanks to the appeal of hiking, and many art lovers with walking, thanks to the works of art to be spotted on each mapped circuit. Not a year goes by now without me going at least once to park my caravan in Lahaymeix (55), one of the six villages that invented this human and cultural project, bold and pioneering. Why Lahaymeix rather than another? Because this is where Vent des Forêts has been building its House since 2020. Since it bought what was the legendary café of "la Fernande", the only one in existence in the past, where hikers came as much to cool off as to satisfy tradition. Because she was a character, Fernande Simon.
The sign painted in honor of "Champigneulles, the queen of beers" has disappeared. The typography of the new storefront, a true work of art in its own right, specially created by a graduate of the Atelier national de recherche typographique, changes every year: here, we are not in a village café quite like the others. Here, something is invented. Here, Irène Thiébaut, a resident of Lahaymeix, met her husband at the age of 16, in 1967, in the ballroom, and today she chats on the terrace with Alexander Lee, an internationally renowned artist living between French Polynesia and New York. One of her neighbors is also there this afternoon, and everyone congratulates each other over a coffee, served in engraved glasses, now works of art for sale, that the trailer that transported 7 tons of Senonville stone did not pour into the ditch before Alexander could make his "'Ofa'i," a monumental sculpture in the form of a reminder, nestled in the hollow of a clearing. Not without the Tahitian artist telling them that fossilized coral was found in this little corner of the Meuse, and that his work speaks of transplantation, as much as the tradition of the Vent des Forêts whereby creators from all over the world are hosted here by the villagers each year… Would you like a little madeleine? Welcome to the House!
“This place is full of the personality and tenderness of Madame Simon,” appreciates Pascal Yonet, director since 2008 of the contemporary art center, today labeled of national interest, supported since 1997 by an association bringing together six agricultural and forestry villages: Fresnes-au-Mont, Lahaymeix, Nicey-sur-Aire, Pierrefitte-sur-Aire, Dompcevrin and Ville-Devant-Belrain. A contemporary art center where production takes place in the open air. However, the association’s offices, with seven employees, and the stocks of equipment essential to the production of monumental pieces needed a roof! The former therefore settled in the town hall of Fresnes-au-Mont, but the latter had to scatter all over the place…
During the two years that passed between Fernande's death and the conclusion of the sale, Pascal Yonet carefully created the conditions to make this new adventure possible. "I didn't want to rush because the association's accounts have to be balanced, and being the owner of such a behemoth is really a new job!" The artistic director had to add a few strings to his bow, such as training in the IV license that the municipality acquired, or a cash register and beverage or ice cream stock management software! "Le Vent des Forêts had never been in a consumer logic, there is no work of art for sale here, it is a place where the public is autonomous, where everything is free: we invite people to learn to read a map but also to get lost, to rediscover the meaning of values. They are given the means to not be assisted, to be both in reality by doing their part of the journey, and in thought, reverie, wonder by walking…” Proof that accountability works: the works visible freely along the seven marked trails are perfectly respected. And there is no doubt that the gentle start-up of the Maison Vent des Forêts will be too. A sweet break to start, and cultural programming in perspective. “It will happen gradually. I hope that the public will really be welcomed by the café, itself a place of creation: here, all the objects have a story,” specifies Pascal Yonet. “Our mission as an association is to support but to give a little height. Because we can be popular, qualitative, have a vision for our territory… without being elitist!”
In this rural context, the tribulations of the contemporary art market seem far away. The idea of Vent des Forêts has always been to favor meetings and the work of today's visual artists with local residents and artisans. The association achieves a rare and extremely precious alchemy: a strong bond is established between the population, the association's volunteers, the families who host the artists and the latter, which gives rise to memorable works and meetings during the annual residencies for the creation of new works and the restoration of older ones. In fact, this participatory project draws a new way of experiencing rurality, whose values are naturally transmitted to visitors who can choose from seven trails, walks of 1 to 5 hours of walking, on 5,000 hectares of forest. "At a time when rural artistic initiatives are flourishing, Vent des Forêts, working for its convictions rooted for more than a quarter of a century, has not waited to be carried by the spirit of the times or by political incentives..." concludes Camille Debrabant in her article for Artpress.
A doctor in art history, the teacher at the Ecole nationale supérieure d'art et de design de Nancy shares in the summer issue of the contemporary art magazine the enthusiasm she visibly felt while walking along the Meuse trails. “When the two Tourelle d’Y Voir observatories (2018-22), erected by Erik Nussbicker, offer walkers the opportunity to gain height to perch in the foliage, Abdul Rahman Katanani’s metallic Mushrooms (2017), colonizing the trunk of a dead beech tree, make barbed wire the accomplice of regeneration and no longer the instrument of confinement, enclosing the Sabra refugee camp in Beirut where the artist was born. In Un jour sans fin (2022), Pier Sparta invents another escape from detention, offering six inmates from the Saint-Mihiel penitentiary center the opportunity for a collaborative creation in which their drawn chimeras are embodied in a group of bas-reliefs in armed mortar.” Anna Coulet, Theophile Peris, Pinaffo & Pluvinage, Charlie Jouan, Stéphane Pelletier, Aurélie Ferruel and Florentine Guédon… but also Aurélien Lepage, Antoine Libaert, Patrick Neu, Jean-Luc Verna, Edouard Boyer… The list of artists who travel to Vent des Forêts is endless.
Article written by Valibri en Roulotte
Illustration: This work by Margot Pizard benefited from a partnership with the DNMADE Métier d'art en menuiserie of the École Boulle in Paris. It was produced with the support of the ONF for the collection of ash wood, and with the help of volunteers from Vent des Forêts.