Tag: Matthew Broussard

Matthew Broussard…a day at the office

We received some great photos from the quarry where Matthew has been working for the last two months helping to realize a monumental sculpture for Ugo Rondinone. The quarry photographer, Roberto Toya, captured the intense working conditions of the Moro Serizzo quarry in Crodo in these beautiful black and white compositions.

Matthew Broussard at Moro Serizzo - photo Roberto Toya all rights reserved
Matthew Broussard at work in the Moro Serizzo quarry – photo Roberto Toya all rights reserved

Matthew Broussard at work in the Moro Serizzo quarry - photo Roberto Toya all rights reserved
Matthew Broussard at work in the Moro Serizzo quarry - photo Roberto Toya all rights reserved
Matthew Broussard at work in the Moro Serizzo quarry - photo Roberto Toya all rights reserved

Matthew Broussard at work in the Moro Serizzo quarry - photo Roberto Toya all rights reserved

The story of the Moro Serizzo quarry itself is quite romantic. Here is an excerpt from that story as told by one of the quarry owners, Mariateresa Moro:

Just before the second World War, my father Giovanni Mario Moro was working as a stone cutter in his hometown Montemerlo in the province of Padua. In 1938, at the age of 24 seeing as his finances weren’t flourishing, he decided to leave his hometown to seek his fortune taking only a few things with him, among which was his chisel which he was romantically proud of. When he arrived at Bolzano he heard of the Ossola Valley and the possibilities of finding work there. This is how he found his way to the Pelganta quarry in Crodo. The quarry belonged to the parents of my mother Gina, who was just a young lady at that time. As time went by, Gina and Mario fell in love, which was a worrying situation because he was too old for her and a stranger to the town and she was too young for my austere old fashioned grandparents. My parents decided to leave their work and their family to get married and start a new life together. This is how our family firm started in 1953: at first they exploited erratic boulders, then in 1963 they bought the family quarry and eventually in 1979 they created a laboratory where the entire work cycle was completed, from the extraction of the stone to its saw milling and to the final workmanship. Sixty years have now gone by since this project started, a project which grew and flourished from a love story. Our profession has evolved over the years, we have new machinery, new methods of working the stone and a different way of dealing with business. Today, Moro Serizzo is owned and run by three women: my two daughters Raffaella and Tiziana and myself.

A whole new page…

Anyone familiar with this blog knows that I work alongside my husband, contemporary artist and furniture designer Matthew Broussard, both as a partner in building bespoke furniture and as a studio assistant for his artistic projects. I sand, gild, apply fine finishes and, the best part: spend lots of time talking about painting compositions, production methods and how to get from concept to completed project. You’re welcome to take a look at our latest projects on the newest page that we’ve made HERE.

Matthew working on his latest commission “Citta del Sole”

 He writes: 

City of the Sun – a painting

by Matthew Broussard on Sunday, July 8, 2012 at 2:02pm ·

City of the Sun

This painting takes its name from Tommaso Campanella’s book, written in the sixteenth century, in which Campanella describes an ideal city, an ordered, just, and poetic society.

The image is of a piazza that was built by my daughter with wooden building blocks on the floor of our room. I was struck by this act of ‘tracing’ a city both conceptually (she explained in minute detail the reason behind the placement of each block) and as it is realized, even in the adult world. From philosophers to urbanistic experts and the ordinary city-dweller who lives in the midst of it, everyone has their own concept of what the city should or could be.

Pictures from an exhibition

PLACE table, D.I.S.D. chair, and painting by Matthew Broussard

 Matthew Broussard’s press preview event at GWEP public&media relations new space, Guendalina bla bla was a great success, here are a few images (courtesy of Davide Campi) from the exhibition which will be open to the public for the first time today from 3:00 to 7:00 pm – click on the address below for a map:

Sculptural Lamp and MINT shelves (on loan from Mint Market, courtesy of Renato Baldini) by Matthew Broussard

To read an article about Matthew published in La Stampa in Italian or English, click HERE.

Limited edition bla bla torchiere and cedar-plank with steel book shelf by Matthew Broussard.

Matthew makes the news…in a good way!

La Stampa di Torino, 
Venerdi 23 Marzo 2012 (p 27).
@font-face { font-family: “Times New Roman”; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: “Times New Roman”; }table.MsoNormalTable { font-size: 10pt; font-family: “Times New Roman”; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; } Written by: Roselina Salemi for LA STAMPA 
Friday, 23 March 2012 – Page 27

translated by: Bonnie McClellan
 
Matthew Broussard
The American who lives near Lago Maggiore, with one of the shelving units that he’ll be presenting at the Fuorisalone during Milan’s design week.
At the 2012 Fuorisalone taking place during Milan’s design week in April, he’ll bring a low table, a storage system, an original bookshelf, light and yet demonstrating a complex equilibrium between positive and negative space.
Matthew Broussard – not quite fifty, born in Louisiana and raised in Dallas with a BA in sculpture from Baltimore and happily transplanted to Gemonio, near Lago Maggiore – likes working with elm wood, a material rarely used. In Italy since 1991, he has moved easily between land art, such as his installation in the bed of the Taglimento river, to fine art and has a passion for functional objects, as long as they have a unique character.
He explains that he enjoys materials with a life of their own, he likes to contemplate, imagine, and transform found objects. The surface of one of his tables includes a paving stone from a Tuscan piazza. There are no borders, according to him, between artist and craftsman: there is a special relationship with nature, the pleasure of ‘considering’ things and making them.

Where are they now?

“It is this gesture towards real communication, offered in the midst of the flash-flood of information that our culture deluges us with every morning as soon as we open our eyes, that is being offered by the poets who will be presented over the next 29 days. An arbitrary flower in the midst of chaos for you, the reader.”

I hope that you’ve all enjoyed the 29 flowers that were offered from Australia, Brazil, Denmark, France, Italy, the United States, and Wales by way of Budapest.

International Poetry Month 2012 is over. The marauding hordes have left the library ablaze, the flood has washed away the ashes, the caravan carrying the last copy of the precious poetry collection has vanished in the desert; at least that’s what it feels like to me as I hit the delete key and erase the written versions of the poems.

Now what?

What remains is the oral tradition; I have made audio files of each poem available where the poem used to be posted when permitted by the poet.  When the poems can be found elsewhere on the web I’ve left a link. Anyone who is on my mailing list has a ‘fragment’ of each work. Perhaps, like the poems of Sappho, this is all that will remain.

I would like to extend my profound thanks to the following guest poets for their contributions:

Anonymous 2oth Cent. Poet

Matthew Broussard

Gilles-Marie Chenot

Maxine Beneba Clarke

Lee Elsesser

Chris Fillebrown

Brad Frederiksen

Giacomo Gusmeroli

Michelle Lee Houghton

Christian Stokbro Karlsen

Helen Martin

Tom McClellan

Benjamin Norris

Angel Raiter

Adina Richman

Liliane Richman

Tim Seibles

Octavio Solis


Some of these poets have blogs or websites where intriguing writing, images, or biographical information may be encountered. I encourage anyone suffering from poetry withdrawal to visit these sites by clicking on any of the names that appear in color. Others are tantalizingly unavailable, if you want to see more of their work you’ll have to hope that they come back next year. Of course my work that is or has been posted throughout the rest of the year is still here.

Thanks as well to everyone who has stopped by to read and comment on the poems either here or on Facebook. It has been a real joy to present so much fine poetry again this year. Now I have to start thinking about next year and get back to writing.

A presto!

Chez des américains

I’ve spent the last 10 days on the French Rivera in Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat. This sounds more frou-frou than it actually is. My husband is here working and so Robin Kay and I took some time off for a vacation because the train ticket was all of 39 euro for the both of us and there is an apartment with a kitchen and a washing machine. So, it costs about what it does to be at home; but, here there’s the sea! Yes, I know, that’s not a great picture but I’m here with my wonderful telephone/camera and I forgot the connector cable!

Me feeling relaxed, it’s 10 degrees warmer here than in Lombardy!

We went to carnival in Nice twice, to the Matisse Museum and to see the Church near the park where there were ancient Gallo-Roman ruins and the monastery of Cimez. Those have been our Sundays. Otherwise Matthew has been working 7am-7pm and Robin and I have been on our own.

We’ve been taking the bus to the local market at Beaulieu-sur-Mer a few days a week and spending the rest of the time at the beach building stuff with rocks. There are beautiful olive trees everywhere, even growing out of the wall next to the apartment:

There’s a mandarin orange tree and lots of sun. The water is not yet warm enough to go for a swim but it’s still a beautiful turquoise blue down on the beach. Everything smells warm and salty and my hair has slowly gone from the static-filled straw of winter to humid curls.
Two days ago we went to the gardens at the Villa Ephrussi de Rothschild and stayed for a surprising 3 hours. Robin was thrilled with the Japanese gardens and the musical fountains with ‘dancing’ water. Since then she’s been building ‘gardens’ on the beach with tidy borders and large rocks with raked sand around them.
Today she’s off with her Dad, first to the building yard and now to the job-site. I’ll have good pictures of her, carnival, and her seaside gardens when we get back and I find that cable!

Untitled: by Matthew Broussard

The written version of this poem has disappeared. Find a reading and a link to more information about this poet below:

 

To listen to a reading of these 2 Haiku, click on the player:

Artwork by and information about Matthew Broussard may be found at the following links:

Matthew Broussard

de freo Gallery

The Store (For Matthew): by Bonnie Broussard

The written version of this poem has disappeared. Find a reading and a link to other work by this poet below:

To listen to a reading of this poem, click on the player:

To read or hear more work by Bonnie McClellan-Broussard, click HERE

Flowers…and more flowers!

portrait of a lady 
Jan Joseph van Goyen

Had a great birthday weekend in Milan! The city has so much to offer even if it’s spread out from one neighbourhood to another. After our trip to the Pinacoteca di Brera where I got an eyeful of wonderful paintings. Matthew did most of the  girl wrangling so that I could look in peace while she had a tour of fancy chairs with velvet cushions. Some of the most engaging paintings were the smallest; I loved the portraits by an unknown Venetian painter that were over to the side of the door in room 20. Trying to look at a notebook sized painting by Brueghel, I had to keep slipping my glasses up and down to see it, I really felt like an old lady! Next to it was this jewel of a Dutch seascape:

After the museum we stopped for a glass of wine and then went on to see our friend Renato at Mint Market, the beautiful home/beauty/flower store for which Matthew designed the furnishings. Renato was just finishing up with some customers so we ordered aperetivi from the bar down the street (one of the pleasures of the city is that, if they know you, the local bar will deliver cocktails down the street to where you are). While we were waiting, Matthew said, “Did you see that bouquet of white flowers?” pointing to a stunning arrangement of roses, broom, miniature lilies and fresia that was as big as our daughter. As we walked over to admire them he said, “Those are for your birthday.” I felt like an actress who’d just won an Oscar without having done anything to deserve it!

My birthday bouquet from Mint Market

 As a testimony to the quality of the flowers at Mint Market, these survived being carried through the very crowded Milanese metro three times, a night in a warm apartment and a 2 hour train ride before I took this picture!
Mint Market’s owner, Renato Baldini, is a truly lovely person. He gave my daughter Robin Kay a splendid bouquet of sunset coloured runculus so that she would feel special too:

Robin’s Runculus and my Cake

Then he let her help carry the flowers in before closing the store. He also gave me this elegant hyacinth so that now the whole house feels like spring right in the midst of winter.

Hyacinth bulb waiting to open