Tour Grimaldi
Tourtour, France
The Tour Grimaldi is one of two towers that gives Tourtour its name. Considered to be a thousand years old, it was likely a lookout tower commanding views across the valleys below.
Èze
Èze, France
Populated since 200BC, the village of Èze is perched high above the Mediterranean.
Friedrich Nietzsche stayed here while writing 'Thus Spake Zarathustra', and often walked the steep path down to the sea.
Imaginarius Architectura
n/a
Meridian
Nice, France
The Nice Observatory is renowned in part for the large dome designed by Gustave Eiffel. On a walk through the grounds, our attention was directed to a line painted on the road by the astronomers. It was explained that this ran along a meridian line between the poles of the Earth.
I was reminded of a proposal, made years ago by the Canadian conceptual artist Iain Baxter, to hand-paint a dotted red line on the snow following the Arctic Circle around the entire northern hemisphere. His project was not completed.
Vimy #16
Vimy Ridge, France
Rip Rap Redux
Nice, France
Bob
Nice, France
One of our senior instructors at art school was Bob Pfeiff - a former US Navy test pilot - who loved to regale us with flying stories. One of my favourites was of a time he was putting a prototype jet through its paces to see how it performed. The story goes that he was flying at night when he glimpsed the moon through a break in the clouds. He said he turned and aimed straight for the moon, "threw it on full after-burners..." and just flew as far as he could until he ran out of atmosphere and fell back toward the earth.
I made this image for Bob.
(Robert Louis Pfeiff 1928 - 2024)