Kid Version -- Playing in the Dirt

Hi guys!

How are you doing? Since I last wrote, I finished up a term in Savannah, Georgia, and flew to France, where I am living and studying art for a while.

Some of you may know that I like to paint with mud. I think it is great for a few reasons. Here are some of them:

1.) It is cheap (almost always free!)
2.) Almost everyone can find some and use it
3.) It makes pretty patterns and designs on the paper which other paints can’t do.
4.) It makes me think about the place where I got the mud when I’m painting a picture

Now I have a question for you: what color is dirt? When I was younger, I would have said, “Brown!” I would have been right, but not completely. You see, dirt is made up of different combinations of minerals, clays, pieces of plants, sand and other materials. The color of the dirt depends on what is in it. One of my favorite things about being in this part of France (the south) is the variety of dirts I get to see every day. I’ve been collecting different samples from each place I visit and I now have about 40 different colors! Can you believe it? All from one small area! They are mostly reds, browns and yellows, but some are darker than others. Some are lighter. Some are more green while others are more purple. I put the dirt in a plastic bag, then bring it home where I mix it with water and pour it through a strainer to filter out the bigger things like rocks, leaves and snails. After I put any snails back in the garden outside, I pour the dirt in yogurt cups and let it dry out.

Here you can see the mud drying in yogurt cups on the windowsill.

Eventually, they become solid chunks of dirt and I use them like the watercolor paints you might use.

Here are some of the muds I used in my last art project after they have been filtered. One of them isn't mud. Can you tell which one?

A lot of the new colors I collected came from an amazing place called Roussillon. Its name means “red trench.” A trench is like a little canyon in the ground, and from these next few photos, I’m sure you can guess where it got its name.

Walking around in Roussillon.

Part of the "red trench"

Roussillon from the ochre mine.

Some windows in Roussillon.

You see, almost all the buildings in Roussillon are painted orange, red, brown or yellow because it is right next to an ochre mine. Ochre is used to make paints and it’s found in the ground, just like gold or diamonds, but to me, ochre is more valuable. It comes in many different colors and I think most of them are in Roussillon. The yellows were so bright I wanted to wear sunglasses and some of the reds were so dark, they looked like dried blood.

Isn't this crazy?

You can imagine how excited I was to see all these different colors of mud, especially since the whole town was painted in them. Or if you can't imagine, I'll show you:



If you could paint the buildings in your town any colors, which ones would you choose?


One of my favorite stories is one at the beginning of the Bible, where we are told that God made Adam out of dirt and then breathed into him to bring him to life. I like to pretend that God did that for every human, that each of us is made from some dirt and a bit of God-breath. As I’ve been seeing, there are so many different colors of dirt that God could choose from! It’s no wonder that people all look different. Some of us have yellowish skin, while others of us have redder skin or brown skin. I think there must be as many different colors of people as there are of dirt.

After collecting dirt in Roussillon, my skin color was different!

The more you look at people in your city, your school, your church and even your family, the more you will realize how different we all look. What color is your skin? What color are your eyes?

But if you keep looking (and it’s always important to keep looking!), you will also notice that we are all quite similar too. We each have a head with a face on it. We all smile sometimes and frown sometimes. We all need to eat and drink and sleep. Do you know someone whose skin is a different color than yours? Try to think of three things that you and he or she have in common. Maybe you both wear glasses. Maybe you both like cheese pizza or basketball. Maybe you speak the same language. Or maybe you both like playing in the dirt.

Have a good week!

Love,
Sarah Jackson

Lacoste and Easter

Hello Everyone,

I have just completed my second full week in Lacoste, the tiny town in the south of France where I will be living and studying for the next two months. Each term, about 60 SCAD students come and take up residence in this medieval village on a hill. It’s a strange existence full of juxtapositions. We live in ancient stone houses and hike up and down the steep cobbled streets to get to the various buildings we frequent. Yet our schedules and classes mirror our life back in Savannah. We buy lavender at the local market to hang around the house, which we’ve heard keeps away the scorpions (though when we found one in our house and my friend Lis valiantly threw a pice of lavender at it, it didn’t have much of a reaction, so she crushed it with a dust pan). And rustic though the lavender sounds, almost all of us have laptops ipods and cameras that also decorate our living spaces. We’re in the middle of rural France, but most of the students don’t speak French, so we function in English. The library is an old bakery with a reading room in the old brick oven, and yet we also have access to high tech computer labs and printers. As we look out over the surrounding valley, we can see a quilt of orchards and vineyards which are beginning to bloom, yet as we look up the hill, we can see the chateau originally owned by the Marquis de Sade.

The view as we head down to the dining room.

The view from the one of the terraces of the SCAD buildings in Lacoste.



Looking down at the valley below Lacoste.


The valley after the rain.

Some of the orchards and vineyards in the valley.

A misty morning in Lacoste.

Life here is surreal, but after Savannah, surreal is becoming normal, so it’s rare that I actually realize how strange it is that I am here doing what I am doing. And what, exactly, am I doing? Well, in a town of 400, there’s not much to do other than go to class, draw, chat with friends, eat, walk around, and sleep. It’s a good thing that these are some of my very favorite activities. I live with four other girls in a stone house and it’s also a good thing that probably my favorite students here are the ones that I’m living with.

The garden outside our house.
When we arrived, it was full of white blossoms and bees.

My room is a tiny loft which we call the hobbit hole. It has a slanted ceiling and I can stand up straight for only about a third of it. It fits a bed and a small cabinet which I use as a desk. I have an orange comforter, a teal pillow case on the floor that I use as a rug and post cards on the wall from the places I’ve been. I love it. It’s also really lucky that the student coordinator happened put the short girl who likes confined spaces in this particular room.

My classes, as always, are a mixed bunch, and I’ll write more about them later when I’ve had more time to form opinions about them, but in general, it’s been great to be here and to be making art in a new and beautiful setting.

A girl enjoying a band outside the Roman amphitheater in Arles.


In a church in Arles.


Buildings in Arles.


The amphitheater in Arles.


A chocolate fountain from inside a chocolate shop in Apt.

A doorway in Les Baux-de-Provence.


Light from a stained glass window in a church in Les Baux-de-Provence.

We have gone on several field trips to nearby towns for various reasons, but one of the biggest highlights was going just across the valley this weekend for Easter mass. About ten students piled into a van on Sunday morning and we drove to Bonnieux, the village on the hill that faces Lacoste. In the mid-1800s, the villagers had built a church at the base of the town because the aging parishioners were having trouble summiting the hill to the original cathedral. For Easter, though, everyone made the effort. Like most of the churches around here, the building was old and dark and stoney. We huddled together in the pews, our breath rising like incense. A miniscule French granny with a rickety voice sat next to me. To the delight of the ushers, the church was so full that they had run out of bulletins, so the lady and I shared one. The priest was a large man who, from his accent, I judged was from somewhere in northern Africa. His voice echoed joyfully between us and though the homily was straightforward, I was moved to tears to hear the core belief of my religion proclaimed with such vigor and in such a setting.

For four years, I have been reading the Bible in French, but to hear anew the poetry of both the language and of the story we were celebrating was powerful indeed. When we were saying the prayers for the day and the priest mentioned the ongoing struggles after the earthquake in Haiti, I realized how eclectic and far-reaching this hour of my day was. Here I was, in an isolated medieval village in France, nestled between a kindly French woman and a group of U.S. college students who had almost no idea what was being said, being led by a north African man to pray for our brothers and sisters in Haiti. My mind ping-ponged around the world to past Easters I’ve celebrated with various people: in central France with my host family, in Hermanus with my aunts and uncles, in Ho Chi Minh City with my parents and brother, in Tacoma with my mentor and her family, and, of course, in Spokane with my family (both biological and surrogate). I was reminded yet again of how the God I believe in is both infinitely diverse and yet also fundamentally universal.

One of the main questions I had before I came to France four years ago was whether the French used the formal or the informal pronoun when addressing God. For your elders or people you don’t know well, you use “vous,” while for your family, friends and people who are younger than you, you use “tu.” There is even a verb, tutoyer, which means “to use the informal with someone.” I could make a case either way: God is our ultimate elder and should be the object of all our respect, but on the other hand, he is our most intimate friend and, at least metaphorically (for how else could we understand God?), our closest family member. The result? “Tu.” Unequivocally “tu.” It was good to remember that Easter is the reason why we can tutoyer God. Somehow, through some kind of Magic or Mystery that emanates from this day, we are actually able to approach the God of the universe. Somehow because of this day, we are able to sit next to strangers who may or may not even speak the same language as us, and in doing so, we commune with God.

I hope that for those of you who celebrated it, you had a Happy Easter, and for everyone, that you are well and happy.

I miss you! Have a good week,

Sarah/Mouse