Painting French Murals...a job that feels like a vacation! (Part 2)

Since my first post on this exciting project, I have had NO time to do anything but draw and paint my mural designs at PB Boulangerie Bistro. One month later, I am finally taking a day off and thought I'd give a quick update of the murals. They are almost completely finished...just a few more days of painting left, and then I'll share pictures along with the stories behind each one.

In my last post, I showed the little sketches I had done originally. My next step was to enlarge those to full size, which I did in my dining room.

 This is the drawing for the city of Lyon, with the Rhône river, the Hôtel Dieu, the basilica of Notre-Dame de Fourvière, and a hot-air balloon, just for fun.

Starting to paint the first wall - the wine wall. 

I had brought my iPod with me for music, but it was much more fun to listen to the piped in French radio at the restaurant. If you like French songs (including classics as well as Top 40), click on Chante France, the music station from Paris, that I've been listening to this month. A number of the songs they've been playing are also on my iPod, so I knew them, but most are songs I didn't know, which made it really fun. That helped me get into the mood, as did all the French language flying around between the chef, his visiting family and his staff.

I transfered my drawings from paper onto the walls, and then began painting. Here is a taste of what's to come:

Painting French Murals...a job that feels like a vacation! (Part 1)

I recently began what is certainly my favorite mural job, ever: I am designing and painting scenes of traditional French life with a focus on food and wine, at our favorite local French restaurant. I had stopped doing murals, several years ago, in favor of spending time on my paintings for our gallery, as well as painting new needlepoint designs for my wholesale business KSH Needlepoint Collections. However, when our friend, Chef Philippe Rispoli, asked me about doing murals for his charming boulangerie and bistro, I simply could not resist.

I lucked out because Philippe started out as a huge fan of Jack's paintings. He currently owns two of them and is talking about having a show of Jack's works this summer, at the restaurant. He only found out later that I paint murals.

Chef Philippe Rispoli

Philippe's PB Boulangerie Bistro is located just 20 minutes from our house, in Wellfleet (well, 40 minutes in the summer, but so worth the drive). We originally met him, after we moved to Cape Cod, when friends told us we simply had to try the outstanding food the chef prepares there. The very first time we ate at PB, we went back into the open kitchen to congratulate the chef and have had a growing friendship, ever since.  I love this video interview with Chef Philippe:

Philippe grew up outside of Lyon, the gastronomic capitol of France, and cooked there for many years before moving to the United States. He has a stellar résumé, beginning at age 14, eventually cooking with the great Paul Bocuse in Lyon, and then with Daniel Boulud, in this country. Discussions with Philippe about Lyon and his favorite thoughts about that part of France, led to the various concepts for my murals. In addition, I have looked at lots of photos and books about the Lyon and Beaujolais regions of France. Probably most importantly, I am also relying on my own love affair with France and everything French.

I am having so much fun creating pictures of typical daily life in France, that I almost feel as if I am there on vacation. My soul is definitely on the other side of the Atlantic this week! While it's not as good as really being there, this job has been brightening my winter days on Cape Cod.

Basically, I am writing a story with pictures. While sketching out my concepts, I am making up people I would like to meet and buy food from at the local market - and I'm putting lots of my favorite foods into that market. I am watching a "guignol" puppet show with cute French kids, and admiring Philippe's French black cocker spaniel. In my imagination, I am looking at the rolling hills of beaujolais, covered everywhere with vineyards and dotted with charming little towns nestled in those hillsides. I am sipping wine at a sidewalk café. In short, I have been creating an imaginary French town where I would like to live, and putting in all my new friends and neighbors, from the town butcher to a chic young woman with an Hermès birkin bag.

For starters, here are what my original concepts looked like - done on tracing paper, so that I could see  graph paper through it. The graph grid has made it easier to transfer the small sketches to life-size drawings on heavy paper, which will be taken to the restaurant when I start to transfer the designs onto the walls. Painting will be the last (and longest) part of the process.

The wall devoted to wine - in barrels, wooden cases and bottles for tasting.

This walls depicts the cityscape of Lyon, which lies at the junction of the Rhône & Saône rivers. It includes a péniche - a river barge, typical of the city.

Vieux Lyon is the old part of the city. I have included a boulanger (baker) and a chef, as well as as an organ grinder.

A scene typical of the countryside surrounding Lyon, with a fois gras duck, pigs & the famous cows from Charolles, who produce divine beef for Paul Bocuse, and restaurants all over France. The Roman ruins and vineyards are also common sights.

The Place du Marché, with everyone from Philippe's mother, who in real life, makes homemade jams for the restaurant... to the fish seller offering American lobster (my nod to Cape Cod!)

I have been working on the full-scale drawings for a week now, and am almost finished with them. Then I literally have one month while the restaurant is closed, to paint everything in place. Wish me luck, and come along with me on my "journey"!

The Wellfleet OysterFest

Wellfleet oysters and a shucking knife

I love oysters on the half shell. For me, eating oysters fresh from the sea and shucked on the spot is about as good as it gets. Wellfleet, here on Cape Cod, is renowned the world over for its delicious oysters, which are delicate, salty and sweet. They are fabulous just plain or with a fresh squeeze of tangy lemon juice. My favorite way to enjoy these little jewels is with a dollop of bright red, spicy tomato cocktail sauce and a bit of grated horseradish on top. The freshly shucked, icy cold oyster is awash in its bath of fresh, clean, briny Wellfleet Harbor water, which complements the flavor of the oyster, and helps the little goodie slide across the palate and down the throat (or "down the hatch" as we used to say, when I was a child). To read more about Wellfleet oysters, click here. And a New England news station did this video segment on the local industry.

This weekend, the charming town of Wellfleet, right here on Cape Cod, is hosting its 10th annual Wellfleet OysterFest, so naturellement, Jack and I just had to check it out. Now, you have to understand that it gets pretty darn quiet on the Cape as the fall months get colder, so I expected small crowds - mostly locals. We got there early, so that was pretty much the case in the first few hours. However, by noon, we were amazed at the popularity of this event. Apparently, as many as 15,000 people visit it each year, and this year was no exception, as far as we could tell. The event is incredibly well orchestrated, including shuttle buses taking people into town form parking areas at all of the town beaches.

The main attraction is, of course, raw oysters on the half shell, and booth after booth was set up with oystermen (and some women) shucking oysters, fresh from the harbor. There were also other kinds of raw shellfish, including cherrystones and littlenecks. Then there were booths cooking up local favorites like clam cakes, fishcakes, oyster stew, clam chowder, lobster bisque, and food for non-shellfish eaters, including sausages, pizza, even cotton candy... to each his own. Local breweries and Truro Vineyards (next door to Wellfleet) were selling libations. We partook of a dozen oysters, a couple of clam cakes, oyster stew and clam chowder - all sooooo out of this world!

Oysters (above) and clams (below)

 Jack snapped this shot of me when I wasn't paying attention.

 Participants of all ages

Recycling bins - Cape Cod style

The line for the soups at The Lighthouse Restaurant was long, but definitely worth the wait, as everyone standing in the line told us. They were not wrong. We got the clam chowder and oyster stew, but the lobster bisque also looked and smelled divine (next year)! The following pictures are of their booth, which was right in front of the restaurant, on Main Street.

The head chef of the Lighhouse was gently sauteing onions, as well as tomatoes, scallions and herbs for the oyster stew. Jack had a nice chat with the chef, and told him about our Drake who is working at the raw bar at Farallon, shucking many varieties of oysters, including Wellfleets. The chef kindly offered Drake a job if he ever wants one!

The aromas from this booth could be detected the moment we got off the shuttle bus - so tempting!

 Just look at all of the herbs floating in the oyster stew!

Happy Jack

Clam chowder (left) and oyster stew (right) are not exactly low cal, but the heavy cream in them is so sweet, it is a sin NOT to taste them.

Oyster stew, from The Lighthouse Restaurant, was loaded with oysters.

In addition to the food, there are tons of booths with artists and artisans selling their wares, including demonstrations, such as a man carving shorebirds out of wood, and really good live music.

Products for sale benefit environmental preservation efforts.

There are exhibits (like the one above) teaching adults and kids alike, about the various kinds of life to be found in the local waters. Other educational exhibits and lectures are held throughout the two-day event, including gourmet oyster and clam tasting with wine pairing, cooking demos by chefs, historical info on the shellfishing industry, guided tours of the estuaries, including the chance to find and then cook your own oysters with an oysterman. Some of these events cost money, but most are free. (All the money raised here is nonprofit, by the way.)

By far the biggest draw of the entire festival is the hotly-contested oyster shucking contest. Entrants shuck as many oysters as they can in an allotted amount of time, while the crowds watch and cheer. Below are some pictures of last year's contest that I found on the festival website:

 

 The winner!

Local flavor includes some fun characters, as the following pictures show:

 

Wellfleet oysters are flown around the world, to arrive at raw bars in restaurants only hours hours after they are harvested. We will be eating dinner at the raw bar at Farallon, in San Francisco, in a couple of days, where we look forward to comparing imported Wellfleet oysters with some of the local California varieties. (Although after paying $15/dozen at the Wellfleet OysterFest, we may find the West Coast price of these little gems a bit hard to stomach!)

If you go to the Wellfleet OysterFest, make sure to arrive early. As Jack and I left town, the traffic crawling toward Wellfleet was as heavy as on any day in the height of the summer season. But don't let that deter you by any means...it is absolutely worth every minute of the wait.