Arts Lab 6.0: Ella Maillard - Month 4

The month of March is synonymous with new beginnings, and so it was for me as I came back to Romania in the night from the 28th of February to the 1st of March. It was the day before the Cucuteni exhibition so everyone was still awake finishing their artworks. Cosmina gave me my first mărțișor for Spring and I was pleased to see my friends again. My dear roommates had painted a happy bear on the wall next to my bed, "Brother Ella" is his name, they know my love for these big wild beasts. 

The next day I adapted myself back to Act House and chit chatted with everyone, so much had happened since I went on that plane to France back in December. I helped some with their artworks, and painted a spiral on Sona's long craft papers. 

Sunday was the big day of the exhibition. For the first time, I was a spectator and not really a participant, as I didn't have time to make anything to present. We spent the morning preparing and hanging everything with cool music as a background, and then it was time for me to discover what everyone had done. I really enjoyed being "on the other side" and getting to experience all the interactive parts. With Nikola, we established the truth: Cucuteni clay figurines were actually a team of table soccer...

On the weekend I went to Iași for a bit, and to the forest. I was relieved to see Viorica again, my friend who knits in the Pasajul Unirii, because I knew that winter for her was tough without a regular roof to sleep under (by the way if you're reading this as a future volunteer from Arts Lab after I'm gone, please go and say hi to her from my part if she's still there, or buy a hat or gloves from her creations, she really is a positive and interesting person). 

We started the week on a Wednesday with a meeting to make info kits and manuals for the next generations. In the evening, I was expecting a good friend who was visiting me for a few days. She was one of my roommates when I was living in Lima and we didn't have much time to see each other since. I went to get her to the station, not knowing that another of my dear roommates had decided to surprise me and that I was going to see not one of them, but two of them smiling at me in front of the railways. I was thrilled and so thankful for the present of these presences. 

I spent the next day part-time in the studio, wedging clay and preparing other shapes for the market/workshops, part-time doing group shopping with Sona, Sinem and Nikola, part-time at the meeting. Something had happened, Saleh had decided to leave without saying goodbye. Maya and Clément, my friends, had accompanied me to the studio before going to visit Iași. I had a few free days with them, so the morning after, we woke up before the sun and hopped on a train to Brașov. The train trip itself was something, as we crossed the Carpates for hours among the snow and the forests. 

We stayed in Brașov for the weekend, and had plenty of cool and heartwarming adventures. We met a lot of people eager to speak French with us, who guided and recommended beautiful hikes. We hitchhiked and improvised on the way, and were so lucky and grateful because we were welcomed with such generosity. On Sunday, it was March 9th and a lady who took us for a ride in the middle of the mountains offered us Mucenici that she had baked herself !!! We enjoyed every bite of it in the sun, sitting in the grass in front of Bran Castle (we didn't go in, there were way too many tourists and it seemed too expensive, and we just had the best experience we could possibly imagine). 

We then went to București and our paths were divided as they had to go back to Strasbourg... but I still had some free time and decided to say hi to my aunts in Constanța. I spent the next day on the train to go back to Târgu Frumos. 

The days before the weekend were dedicated to the studio, I made more plaster molds for the workshop on Monday, hoping for them to dry. Spoiler, they weren't really ready for this morning, but it's okay because the activities always end up quite improvised. I am now writing from the train back from Pașcani. See you in a month.

Report written by Ella Maillard, she's from France and she's one of the 14 volunteers participating in Arts Lab 6.0, a project co-funded by the European Union through the European Solidarity Corps program.