chalkmarks in a rainstorm....

Wendy Stefansson. Chalkmarks in a Rainstorm. 1997

Early one afternoon walking through Paris, I found an image bathed in Vermeer light and spring rain:

The Girl with a Pearl Earring, re-created by a chalk artist on the pavement.

Re-created by the elements.

Re-created by me on black and white film.

Anonymous and abandoned.

(The title of this work and this post are borrowed and adapted from Joni Mitchell's 1988 album.)

on a bench outside of Shakespeare and Co ....

Photo by Wendy Stefansson. Paris. July 2012

Paris parodies itself. (But I guess that's the business of tourist towns.)

of shop windows in Paris and hand-lettered signs....

The window of Shakespeare and Company,
a long-standing English language bookstore in Paris.
Hemingway and his circles used to hang out here.
That's Notre Dame reflected in the glass.

Photo by Wendy Stefansson.

a painter in Paris

On every trip I've ever made to Paris -- and okay, that's only three -- I've taken photos of this shop window and never written down the name. It's on the left bank, facing the Seine, not far from Place St. Michel. The deepest craving for new art materials is triggered in me each time. 

Look at those pastels. Can you see how they are handmade? Can you see their imperfections, their inconsistencies, where the end has been squashed in the process of cutting a length? Don't you just want to pick one up, roll it between your fingers, smell it? (I heard a radio interview once with an artist who made his own pastels. He claimed he could tell the colours apart in the dark by their individual smells.) Don't you just want to try one out? To make a mark?

These things make me happy.

On Chocolate Tasting in Paris

I'm glad I'm not a food writer. I just don't know enough ways to describe the magnificent chocolates and pastries we sampled on our very fun chocolate tasting tour of Paris!

I learned a new flavor I had never before experienced -- ispahan. It combines raspberries, rose petals and lychees. Fitting that the French use the word "parfum" to translate "flavour," as that's really what it seemed like; an inflection made of air. Fresh and insubstantial and surprising.

But what really put the whole experience over the top for me was how visually beautiful everything was -- each pastry, each chocolate a work of art; each shop a gallery.

I want to go home and paint pictures of exquisite pastries.

(I have a new appreciation of Wayne Thiebaud.)

Photo by Ariel Tarpey.

Photo by Ariel Tarpey,

Photo by Ariel Tarpey.

We did our chocolate tasting tour of Paris through Context travel. 

See http://www.contexttravel.com/city/paris/all-walking-tours/cuisine.