My Creative Epiphany in Paris

La Luz de Vida - Light of Life
Steel sculpture by Rose Rosendo

I was invited to Paris by a dear friend to help he and his partner paint his house. The house was located in the neighborhood of the second to the last metro stop outside of the metropolitan area of downtown Paris, in a suburb called Romainville, in the Les Lilas area of Paris. The previous winter they had been out of town and France had had the worst winter in over a 100 years. The pipes had frozen and burst and the whole basement and bottom floor of the house had a foot of water. By the time they had come back from their trip the water damage had extended even to the plaster falling off the walls.

So Jerry (my friend ) called me and said how would I like to spend a month in Paris and help them paint the house. Well I was blown away and of course said yes.

Every morning I would take a walk for about an hour through the neighborhood and to the park and on the way back buy Jerry fresh croissants at the bakery for his breakfast. It was so amazing to be living there as opposed to being a tourist.

I had been taking welding classes before I had come to Paris, in Emeryville, CA, just across the Bay Bridge from San Francisco. Where I had been living and working for my cousin. I wanted to make life sized figures out of cement and because cement is so heavy I needed to know how to weld to make armatures (skeletons) inside the figures. (The cement was so heavy it needed supports inside.) I had been working on what I thought was a skeleton as my first practice piece for my welding class. At that point I only had the chest completed.

  One of the mornings as I was walking through the park, it came to me exactly what I was doing with that steel chest I was working on in welding class. I am a huge fan of writer and teacher Joseph Campbell of mythology fame. I had been very taken with the whole saga of the Heroes' Journey. I had had no intention of creating a steel sculpture, I was creating a skeleton to put cement on. But there it was INITATION. The second step of the Heroes' Journey. The Heroes' Journey has three steps Departure, Initiation and Return. With the second step, Initiation; this is the part of the Journey where the Hero is tested and faces the challenges to be able to complete the journey.

  So for the moment we will leave Rose walking in the park in Les Lilas having her Epiphany. To be continued in the next blog.