Hundreds of sculptures nestled under the trees of the Meuse

Farewell, the sleeping Meuse that the poet sang of: thanks to the Wind of the Forests, the heart of Lorraine beats to the rhythm of contemporary art. A stone’s throw from Verdun and Bar-le-Duc, six villages have joined forces to invite, each summer, a dozen sculptors to invest in woods and fields. In nearly thirty years of existence, the small structure has thus grown hundreds of sculptures, scattered from old barns to fir forests, from streams to edges.

On foot, by bike, on horseback or by car, you have to get lost through these dozens of hectares, on 45 kilometers of paths, along villages with singing names: Dompcevrin, Lahaymeix, Fresnes-au-Mont, Pierrefitte- sur-Aire, Nicey-sur-Aire, Ville-devant-Belrain… Delighted to welcome the artists in residence, the inhabitants are struggling to meet all needs, unearthing wood, hay, scrap metal according to the projects. Offering all their energy, above all. This is how the grace of this center of contemporary art works: to combine the cream of young creation with the most rural of territories.

At dusk, you can go there to sleep in one of the two sylvan houses placed in the heart of the forest by designer Matali Crasset. Le Nichoir and la Noisette offer rudimentary comfort, but everything is designed to open the senses, from the chirping of the robin to the roar of the deer in the fall. At dawn, the hunt for works of art can begin.

Outdoor hazards

There, in a clearing, hides a half-crocodile, half-tree creature, sculpted by Lionel Sabatte in the stumps of oaks felled by the storm of 1999. At the foot of a tree, a disheveled owl plays the totem, posed there like a guardian of the temple by Laurent Le Deunff: he has become the mascot of the walkers. Bristling on the horizon of a field of wheat, Vincent Mauger’s enormous ball, stuck with giant spikes, stands sentinel. These are some of the stars of the course.

Of course, some sculptures have disappeared over the years, these are the vagaries of the outdoors. But every summer, a dozen new ones arise. With the 2022 vintage, all the winds of the world have come to blow there. On the circuit of the Camonin cross, Pierre Charrié reinvents in enamelled sandstone the Fujara flutes of the Slovak shepherds, and thus invites you to converse with the birds. In the niches of the church of Ville-devant-Belrain, Alexander Lee placed three sculptures mixing Christian iconography and the traditional imagery of his native Polynesia, echoing the acculturation enterprise of French missionaries in the 19th century.^e century.

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