Blandine Barthélemy

Blandine Barthélémy has been making utilitarian objects since Normandy. Her work, deeply rooted in the territory, accurately honors each type of wood worked. Presenting 3 of her pieces in our Tactile Objects Selection, we wanted to know a little more about her approach.

Hello Blandine, can you introduce yourself and explain your current practice to us?

Hello, my name is Blandine Barthélemy, I am 41 years old, I live in the Pays d'Auge in Normandy. I settled in the countryside on a 3-hectare plot of land after years of wild roaming around the world on a pedicycle, using only my calves. I bivouacked in nature. Before that I was a freelance graphic designer, from the Beaux-Arts de Caen.

I carved my first wooden spoon on the road, with a survival knife and using an ember to hollow out the bowl! For the 4 years that I have been rooted in Normandy, I have not stopped creating with wood. More than that, I live surrounded by trees, I interact with them daily, at different levels. I plant a lot of them, I pollard them, I pick them, I observe them, I listen to them…

What is your work process?

I live on a plot of land where many trees live, in the Normandy countryside, relatively preserved here. I walk through these places every day and I develop them, it is in this intimate relationship with the grove that the choices are born which lead me to cut down with a saw such a plum tree fallen by the winds, to bring down such a beech (the dominant tree of this place with the oak), to recover one of the immense sprigs of this ancestral willow pollard which borders the bottom of the field, to make from it a quantity of spoons, ladles, etc. Neighbors, acquaintances, more and more numerous, also give me selected pieces, in exchange for an object taken from this gift, which will immortalize it, somewhere…

To do this, I use a large saw, wedges and a sledgehammer, a trimmer, then my carving axe with which I create the outline of the future object. Then comes the time for knives, hooked knives, wastringues, gouges, planes, planes, crankshaft, depending on the needs. I do not sand, I try to manually carry out the best sharpening of my tools (an endless learning process).

I particularly like being able to create an object entirely without any hanging or vice system, it is my body that is in direct contact with the object: spoons lend themselves well to this, you can go into the forest with an axe, a straight knife and a crooked knife and sculpt it entirely on site, sitting in the shade of the trees, on a stump... I then feel not only close to the living world around me, but also to the representations of ancient relationships with this world, where woodworking was done on site, in the right season, in an ingenious and simple way at the same time, in a very intimate relationship with these woody giants.

Our Autumn Selection in which you are participating honors wood carving. Can you tell us about your relationship with this technique?

It was born from the need for a more sensory and active relationship with a world that made no sense to me. More ethical too: I searched for a long time for a fair place in an environment that no longer seemed to me to be able to offer one; today I always try to aim for fairness while shaping the environment that welcomes all these interactions: the territory.

Wood is fascinating because it is alive on a scale that we can reasonably grasp (sometimes a few hundred years) but which is still beyond us due to its extreme antiquity on earth. By making us grasp the long time of the world, it allows us a deep, respectful and truly enriching dialogue by using it to live in an earthly way. Sculpting pieces of wood from the tree chosen or offered by contingencies, to the useful object, with a panoply of tools and techniques rich in worlds, pushes me to remain humble while simply making me happy.

The tool and the gesture are two important elements in wood carving. How do they resonate with you?

Something as fundamental as the familiar is at stake here for me. The familiar, we could say that it is a set of gestures, habits, which are deployed from a being or a thing within a given universe, and which constitute the entire thickness of the relationships between the two (which are much more than two in fact!) over time. The familiar is something peaceful, where we recognize each other, where we end up knowing the other, even in their difference in nature. And relationships are modalities of actions, exchanges, influences, which never cease to evolve. So in the tool and the gesture which materialize this phenomenon of the familiar, there is at the same time a habit which is created, a porosity of the boundaries between different things, and an open search for transformation, for an imaginary finality never reached (the ideal form). When we practice, things seem simple in their progression then in the techniques learned, without needing to conceptualize all that. There is a direct given in the sensations (it works, it doesn't work: I tear the fibers or I go in their direction for example), the feeling of success or not (this form is satisfactory, or is not at all what I had in mind!). And then if we think about it, there is this great complexity (which does not mean complicated) of everything that is at stake in the use of the tool as a mediated relationship to the world, as a creator of worlds, as a fabrication of oneself. We have long believed that it was properly human, the tool, but we come back to it (many living beings use tools to achieve their ends). I really believe that we cannot do without an ethical examination of the tools that we equip ourselves with, that we use daily, in the creation of our trivial and poetic worlds, if we are in some way a researcher in good life (in happiness) in cohabitation with all that also populates the earth.

How do you choose the wood you carve?

Most often depending on the contingencies of my environment: fallen trees, pruning by neighbors, workshop scraps shared by relatives, etc. And in this range, when I can, I make a choice based on the request made to me, for example, depending on the use of the object to be created. Oak or beech for a use that will have to last rather than shine (although they are not incompatible), fruit trees for their colors, lighter trees (willow, poplar, etc.) for their delicacy and ease. Sometimes the affinities of the moment prevail, I am currently sculpting sycamore maple which reminds me of the beginnings of my sculpture activity, I must have had access to this resource by chance, I find with great pleasure its silky and iridescent side, while offering a certain density…

Can you introduce us to the pieces that are presented in our Fall Selection?

I carved these useful pieces from a plum tree and an apple tree from a neighbor who is a cattle breeder, and from a mirabelle plum tree in my forest garden, which fell during a storm. It's banal, but I think they represent the state of my practice in this field. I mean that it's a freeze frame during a wandering in the field of possible forms. Somewhere, these spoons contain all those sculpted before, and are already an impulse towards what will evolve in the next ones. I am happy with the story they carry: my own plastic research, my technical evolution (the progressive skill of the craftswoman), the events and encounters linked to my place of life, the exchanges and gifts that result from them, the futures they perhaps carry (future houses, future users, future stories). An object that seems simple, not so simple to sculpt, which I find embodies well the encounter between the daily and vital gesture of eating, of cooking, and the prism of "civilization" in its thirst for the aesthetic object, its universal need to create. Finally, they carry the reason why I sculpted them, since I have long wanted some of my objects to join the universe of OROS!