Botany and Other Stories

A couple of days ago Françoise, the lovely French lady who lives in Hay, invited me to see her new art studio in Bear Street. It used to be some sort of workshop, and possibly a store for salt. She's got the ground floor set out for art, and has plans for the upstairs as soon as the leak at the back is fixed.
She's a very talented lady - she showed me her botanic illustrations - she did a three year course for a diploma, and it seems to have been a very competitive course. She also showed me a sketch book she made during the course - she did some of the work at the botanic gardens in Lyons, where the staff allowed her to draw plants that were not normally available to the public. It looks like a wonderful place, with Victorian glass houses like Kew Gardens.
And now she wants to share her skills with children. There have already been children of her friends coming to the studio to paint, and she's been out to schools in the area - she showed me the picture of a pomegranate she painted, with spots of juice around it from the real pomegranate she took in to the kindergarten to show the children. She got them to dip their fingers into the juice and dab onto the paper, and then taste the juice. Another, older group, painted leaves, and then she made them into a forest as a collage afterwards.
Her idea is to make a calendar with the children, and several shops around Hay have already agreed to stock it. She's calling the project "Botany and other Stories".
A further idea from a young friend who has just done an art course was to make the calendar as postcards, with the days of the month set out at the bottom, so the picture could be sent as a postcard after the calendar is finished with. She thought this was an excellent idea - and then found that it had been done before, in France - she showed me some of the postcards, which she was going to show to the printer later.
It's a wonderful idea, to encourage children to look closely at nature, and make art. Françoise isn't doing this to make any money - she's spending money on the project, and she seems to be enjoying herself as much as the children are.
And she was listening to one little girl talking to herself as she painted, saying "Be kind to the berries," as she painted red berries on a branch - which may end up as a caption on one of the paintings in the calendar.