Vesprée

Vespree is an old-fashioned word meaning the end of the day, when there is still some light between sunset and nightfall.

As usual, I pay close attention to my surroundings, gathering materials, sensations, and stories. I engage with objects and their uses through unique practices and forms, attempting to restore their lost emotions. Here, wood, memories of a cave, the light filtering through a tinted glass.

In order to make a pair of Bethmale clogs, you need two trees of the same species, grown at right angles. The long, tapered point follows the grain of the wood. In the legend, it is on this point that Darnert pierces the heart of his supposedly unfaithful fiancée and that of her lover. In collaboration with Pascal Jusot, a clogmaker in Arrien-en-Bethmale (France), I play with and reinterpret this object, which has become folkloric, and its violent legend. The piece, blending materials and the realms of the living, offers itself as a small votive monument to love, to vestiges, and to loss. The objects, and the know-how they embody, are not a demonstration; they carry subtle evocations.

With just a few letters changed, Vesper is the archaic name for the planet Venus when it sets after the sun. When it precedes the sun at sunrise, it is called Lucifer. Like the time it evokes, the word is ambivalent and multifaceted.