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