Ensemble 1
Bamboos, fast-growing due to a unique rhizome-dependent system... ... to the usa
The South? Art projects and Business? May I See Your ID?
2018-2022
Each drawing: 59"x37"
Tableau: 105"x150"x20"
An art project as a business? Fast & French? The pig and the chicken? Gaulart & Maliclet? on Broad St, Charleston SC. “This cafe has always thought out of the box, therefore embodying freedom” wrote a customer at its 25th anniversary. G&M created community, and belongs since 2010 to former employees. Most love it (except during the Irak war that is), some regret its casualness. A restaurant critic wrote: “They should not forget that they are French in the States not Americans in Paris.”
Impacted by the 60’s – 80’s, their arts, their groundworks, Jean-Marie and Gwylene open their practice to others (Fast & French workers, youth, educators, Alternate ROOTS members …); they contact communities (470 Charleston area churches, w/ the help of two assistants from Spoleto,”Places with a Past” …); compile data to feed their art installations (the chemistry of cheap fast food, lists of insurance companies…); create educational/artistic connections/experiences (The Charleston Homeless Shelter, Alternate ROOTS; Youth Art Connection and Refugee Family Services in Atlanta with BobbyKing, Rebecca DesMarais and Rebekah Stone; Frank Martin, Harriett Green, Mary-Jane Jacob, Broad St).
And “may I see your ID?
INITIALS OF EMPLOYEES OF GAULART & MALICLET THAT BECAME MANY NICKNAMES.
THEY WERE STENCILED AS A BEAUTIFUL HANGING BY BRLA (Brent Lacy) FOR THE 25TH ANNIVERSARY.
They enroll artists friends (Dominique Haneuse, Jacqueline Larrieu, Olivier Rollin), early customers, early employees turned shareholders and/or turned friends like Kim Cooke, Julia Cart, Laurie and Hugh Cannon, Bill Bundy, James Polzois, Ron Smith, Debra Wright, Christine Castaneda and her mother …welcome everyone ! “We were opening up to the South. We still are. The CAFE was our first art and business venture in the US. Had it not been art and collaboration it would not have survived. We endured four years of destruction around us, when the county built his new courthouse. Imagine that … even the back of the café building was demolished BARELY SAVING THE BATHROOMS. From bathrooms to Broad St, the building is historically preserved!“
So many stories are part of our mind, daily. A full examination of creating, growing, managing, passing on that cafe, our mistakes, their mistakes, would create a full curriculum about trust, money, leadership, friendship, the arts…
… And it is not over.
Fast & French on Broad St in Charleston is turning 40 in 2024!
So many thanks to you ALL.
My Dad may have been proud of some of our relationships here.
1984: Discovering the South is big, not picture charming. There is tension in the air: Black & White histories, silence, warnings, overt invitations to discriminate. Bluntly, a French Industrialist living in Charleston advises Gaulart & Maliclet aka Fast & French to discourage Black patronage.
We explore social challenges and the arts, (Desperately Silent), (Where to?), (Si Continua) … what/who attract us (From a Jail to a School…).
In the studio we undertake our own PORTRAITS OF AMERICA (Holy City; Insurance: Compassion for Sale; Fast/Food/Chain/Feeding),
HOLY CITY with singing all along the pass, in English, Gullah, French, by Dana Stevenson, Leon McKelvey, Jean-Marie Mauclet, Gwylene Gallimard, Robert Rogers, Florence Rogers, Frank Edwards, Peter Austin.
Pencil drawing collages and texts, as a follow-up diagram of Holy City.
FAST/FOOD/CHAIN/FEEDING with a lot of info from fast foods, franchise prices to chemicals, health concerns, food cost…
INSURANCE: COMPASSION FOR SALE offering easy recording possibilities, lots of info as well and a creative script.
September 22, 1989, midnight: Hurricane Hugo hits Charleston. Went outside during the passage of the eye; Fell asleep; Early morning I biked from the 3rd floor of the northeast Calhoun/Pitt corner to Broad St to check THE Business!. Very little damage! We reopened the following day with a generator. It gave us time to empty our refrigerators and a freezer, and offer sandwiches and soups at a very cheap price or for free, boiling water in fondue pots to serve coffee, making our phone available to all as well as other services. The cafe became a solidarity community gathering place that some customers remembered for years. This also kept us away from our worries concerning heavy leaks in our apartment. Thank you François M. who arrived with the last flight landing to Charleston and kept our minds up… So much more still present in our brains or on hundreds of printed pictures! What to do with them?
“Le Calme après la tempête“, the visual memory of a challenge, a hurricane, a dreamcatcher, and three mind-resting stations. The central design is made of stills from the filming of a summer igloo built with teenagers. See them in the floating droplets. (see Ensemble 14)
Mixed media on canvas, stained wood, wax.
From Cafe Scrapbook, 1985? or 1986? RORO, GWGA, HEHA, GRWE