La Tannerie >> Pézenas

Buy 13 tonnes of limestone, invite 13 sculptors to work on the theme "Messages of the body" and then stand back and see what nine days work will do. This is what Pézenas-based Sculptor Dann Chetrit  decided to do one cold January day earlier this year.  By the time the 13  from all over the world arrived the town was in the midst of a heat wave.

They came from India, Jamaica, Zimbabwe, Russia, Czech Republic, United Kingdom, Netherlands, Italy, Senegal, and France.

With only hand tools each had a limestone block weighing about a tonne - which is about 0,5m3 or 6 giant American refrigerators.

The yard was open to the public who could watch the artists' progress over  the nine days of the event.

Perhaps the most formidable challenge was for English-born Nyanda Yekwai (born just off the North Circular road she tells me) who, though the smallest artist, choose the largest piece of stone.

In the nine days the transformation was complete and what had looked like a showroom for a quarry had been transformed into an outdoor sculpture gallery.

As locally based artist Simon Fletcher said, "Dann Chetrit has had  the initiative to bring these sculptors together and has arranged for them to be fed, provided with materials and housed without aid from the Departement - an extraordinary achievement". And for the public, he says : "Being able to see a group of very different makers given the same theme and brought together for a communal activity is stimulating for them and of great interest to the onlooker, who can compare their ways of creating."

Dann, who found most of the 10,000 euros needed to stage the event, hopes that the sale of the works, which will be on show for a year, will help him recoup his costs.

 You can see the results, which are on sale for between 4,400 and 6,500 euros, at his atelier : 
  La Tannerie in Pezenas - 21 rue Calquières-Basses 34120 Pezenas - 04 67 62 27 57

  (Robin Hicks, in "French News", October 2006)