Laurel Zuckerman's Paris Weblog

Happy to be back in Paris!

 

Sure, snowbirds prance around in shorts and sunglasses in my native Arizona, but truly can anything compare to the humid, yet fashionable, snow monkeys of Paris?*

Paris Literary Events, Readings and Workshops March 2013

This month, news from Marilyn Hacker, Douglas Kennedy, Harriet Rochefort, Cécile David-Weill, Alfred Corn, Jennifer K. Dick, Will Inrig, Kate Noakes, Joshua Marie Wilkinson, Dot Devota, Brandon Shimoda, Zachary Schomburg,  Jenny Colgan , Roger Hoeberichts, Roderick Ford,  Angela Bartie, Eleanor Bell, John Calder, Jim Haynes, Kate Stables, Lauren Elkin, Joanna Walsh,John Baxter, Victoria Zackheim, Thomas Gatus, Stephen Dau, Anne Marsella, Rosa Rankin-Gee, Gerald Fleming, Jeffrey Green, Harriet Lye, William Powers, and the Young Authors Fiction Festival. (update in progress, more to follow)

Stuart Nimmo on Perilous Moon, Occupied France 1944 The End Game

When Neil Nimmo hauled back on the joystick to point the nose of his RAF Lancaster bomber into the night sky on April 10, 1944, the average life expectancy for RAF bomber crew was just two weeks. Neil would be shot down over France that night., Along with the crews of six other Lancasters in a short but lethal airborne massacre, 38 international Allied airmen would be killed - and all by one man, Luftwaffe night fighter pilot Hauptman Helmut Bergmann. 

I Remember Better When I Paint, on helping people with Alzheimer's

Berna Huebner's documentary film I Remember Better When I Paint, broke new ground in exploring how art can improve the lives of people with Alzheimer'. Berna and her co-producers have been advocating tirelessly in the past three years in the Alzheimer's community, screening the film in cities and on TV stations throughout the world.  This led to the publication of a book, I Remember Better When I Paint: Art and Alzheimer's: Opening Doors, Making Connections.  Atlantic Monthly and National Geographic recently featured I Remember Better, and this week the innovative @Irememberbetter twitter account is up for a prestigious social media "Shorty Award" fueled by hundred of nominations from twitter followers around the world. 

Barbara Navarro, author of Amazon Rainforest Magic, on the Yanomami, indigenous peoples and art

 

Barbara Navarro and friend

 Barbarro Navarro is a Paris based artist whose decades-long interest in the peoples of the Amazon rain forest inspired her first illustrated book for children,  "Amazon Rainforest Magic: The Adventures of a Yanomami Boy". Based on her experiences with the Yanomami communities living in the jungles of Venezuela and Brazil, Amazon Rainforest Magic relates the journey of Namowë, a thirteen year old Yanomami boy, as he seeks a cure for his baby sister. 

 A Paris Writers News interview

____

Laurel Zuckerman: Where are you from ?

 Barbara Navarro:   Originally I’m from San Francisco, but I’ve been living in Paris since 1977. I first studied art at R.I.S.D. and then got my BFA at San Francisco Art Institute.

  How did you end up in the Amazon rain forest writing a children’s book ?

     For decades, I’ve been interested in knowing why people in subsistence cultures create art. I traveled first to the Dogon people of West Africa to study their végétal pigments, then received University support for obtaining permits from the Venezuelan government to spend time with Yanomami communities to learn more about their painting techniques for body painting and painting on ritual and shamanic implements. I spent several months each winter for twelve years in the Amazon Rainforest. Over the years, I had two exhibitions of my art work (including a burning sculpture performance to protest the ongoing destruction of the Rainforest) in Puerto Ayacucho, the regional capital of the Venezuelan Amazonas state.

 Where did the idea for the book come from ?

      I was so shocked by the degradation of the Rainforest and the lives of the Yanomami when I visited communities in Brazil that it transformed my painting into a more abstract style and I created the first of my (eight so far) burning sculpture performances.

The idea of writing a book for children about the Yanomami and Rainforest issues evolved from my need to speak out about these issues threatening their existence.

 When did you start writing ?

      While I was in Brazil and seeing the devastation myself. The book project took on a life of its own and an urgency.

 How do you write ?  

     It seems to be dreaming itself to me. I help nurture it along, but it’s an irresistible force in my life !

  What was the most suprising thing you discovered writing the book ?

     I’ve been amazed by the way these books seem to inhabit me. I’m woken up in the night by conversations between the protagonist and the shaman or animals speaking and I have to get out of bed to write it down. I have to have a notebook with me everywhere I go.

 How did you get along with the Yanomami ? Will they be able to read your book too ?

      Interestingly, my art created a bond with the Yanomami immediately that has grown over time with return visits to the same communities. Instead of me observing them, they loved observing me drawing and painting. Their generosity in including me in their lives was incredible.

    The book is being published in English and French first, then later in Spanish. The communities that I’m closest to don’t read in any language, not even Yanomami, but the book could be read to them out loud in Yanomami translated from Spanish.

You have a background in art. Did you also do the artwork ?

      Yes !

 Was it difficult to find a publisher ?

      I’m working with a small publisher who specializes in e-books and on-demand printing through Amazon.com and Kindle.

 How are you getting the word out about your book ? Who would you like to reach ?

      People like you ! There’s been a lot of word-of-mouth momentum. This issue is also in the news at the moment because the destruction of the Amazon Rainforest is accelerating and the indigenous peoples affected by that are speaking out.

 What are you working on now ?

     I’m working on the second volume of the series as well as quiz books to accompany the different volumes in English, French and Spanish.

 About Barbara Navarro

Barbara Navarro is a Franco-American artist who has lived in Paris since 1978.  She studied at Rhode Island School of Design and the San Francisco Art Institute. Her exploration of techniques and natural pigments took her originally to West Africa and particularly to the Dogon people of Mali. Over several years, she studied the techniques of traditional « Bogolan » painting. The pigment is  made using a mixture of plants that are dried and crushed and then mixed with mud and applied to canvas dyed an ochre color with boiled bark from the wolo tree . 

Since 1997, voyages to the Amazon Rainforest in Venezuela and in Brazil have informed several series of paintings created while living among the Yanomami. The support used is roughly woven canvas prepared with acrylic medium then textured with a mixture of sand from the river bank and lava. This supple canvas is then rolled and easily transported on expeditions into the Amazon Rainforest. They are  then painted using a mixture of acrylic colors and roucou, the plant-based pigment used by the Yanomami for their ritual paintings. 

Her concern for the ongoing devastation of the Amazon Rainforest has inspired her films and installation projects. Since 2005, she has created a performance and film project « Fire Sculpture » to bring urgent attention to the Rainforest and the indigenous cultures that it sustains. To protest against its continuing destruction, she has been publicly burning her totemic sculptures. These burning sculptures symbolize the degradation of nature and the annihilation of indigenous cultures that depend on the forest for their survival

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www.barbaranavarro.com

 

Leonardo's Mysterious Lost Princess, Interview with Peter Silverman

 

 

Peter Silverman, art collector and author

 Art collector Peter Silverman has an eye. And it told him that a "German, early 19th century" portrait was not what experts said.  He bet $19,000 on this intuition, and, in a development that stunned the art world, was proved right. Incredibly, he had found a previously unknown drawing by Leonardo da Vinci—an exquisite depiction of Bianca Sforza, rendered 500 years ago. Leonardo's Lost Princess is Peter Silverman's thrilling first person account of the decade-long path to authentication, fraught with opposition and controversy, and ultimately resolved by cutting-edge science and deep scholarship.

Help me get rid of my books! I'm drowning here!

Paris is wonderful, my favorite city on earth, but with real estate prices being what they are, I can't really afford to offer free shelter to piles of printed paper any more.

First of all, they multiply.

I thought the ebook would help, but I was wrong.

Why is France in Mali? Libération explains

Threat to French interests

"Since the coup in Bamako against former Malian President Amadou Toumani Toure, in March 2012, and the takeover of northern Mali by jihadist groups and terrorists, Paris attempted, unsuccessfully, to mobilize the international community in favor of a military intervention led by African countries in the region, with the support of the West. French interests and French nationals have been explicitly targeted by terrorists of Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) for several years in the Sahel.

Paris Writers News January 2013 Literary Events in Paris

This month, news from Barbara Navarro, Philippe Labro, Anne Carson, Kati Marton, Cameron Silver, Cynthia Morris, Lisa Reznik, Theasa Tuohy, Tracy Metz, Rosemary Flannery, Timothy Jay Smith, Fred Coleman, Philip Labro, The Young Authors Fiction Festival, The American Library in Paris Book Prize, Wice, Spoken Word and more...

A black swan! I said. No one would believe me.

Two swans, one black, one white, glide silently through Bry sur Marne