Newsletter Chaudesaigues award - EN
The trophy
Daisy Hearts
Le Coeur des Marguerites (a.k.a. Daisy Hearts) is the Chaudesaigues Award. Not only is it a unique prize created to reward great artistry in tattooing, but it is also designed as a symbolic polymorph art piece that has come to bloom after being planted deep through the generations of the Chaudesaigues family history.
Although it was created from a deep personal point of view, Le Coeur des Marguerites is meant to carry universal themes and, like daisies, is open to the world, much like the way it will be handed out to the winner… the way it should be.
Like a flower growing and blossoming, Le Coeur des Marguerites has suffered a long process. This psychorealist piece simply started with a block of clay, a little bit water, and some inspiration. Then the process gained density with the plaster version and then finally came the bronze under the expert hands of a specialist.
The Chaudesaigues Award was born within the great French artistic traditions of bronze sculpting and pays homage to “La Belle Époque”, a classic turn of 20th century style. Le Coeur des Marguerites mixes bronze, marble, and gold; all ancestral, refined, but strong materials that form a modern whole.
Le Coeur des Marguerites is not so much a thing, but rather it is a feeling, a heartbeat that will never die.
The Chaudesaigues Award has been revealed at Shane O’Neill’s Best of the Midwest convention on February 10-12 2012 in Council Bluffs, Iowa.
Patrick Chaudesaigues
The sculptor
Jean-Baptiste Martin felt drawn towards modeling clay from an early age. This skill may be disappearing elsewhere, but it has guided him in his professional and artistic activities.
Jean-Baptiste Martin’s background is rather unusual, although he is not entirely self-taught. He was born in Mâcon in 1979 and grew up in an artistic family (his mother is a social psychologist with a love of photography, and his father a music publisher and film-maker). He obtained his baccalaureate in 1997, but after three weeks of art history at Michelet Paris IV Universityrealized that he did not want to study art but to create it.
In 1998 Jean-Baptiste Martin started as an apprentice with the sculptor Yann Guillon, who taught him to approach sculpture with an artist’s eye, and to work with life models. He learned how to work clay, and the foundations of working with bronze: casting, chiseling, polishing and patina. He was fascinated by patina and the art of coloring bronze using heat and minerals. This is what led him, in October 2000, to become a sculptor, and he joined the Chapon foundry. He originally planned to work there for two years to develop the techniques of working with bronze, but ended up staying until April 2008. He continued to work with clay during this time, and he used the foundry to develop his work in modeling, chiseling and, of course, casting.
During this time Jean-Baptiste Martin was not involved uniquely with creative work, but he now intends to devote himself entirely to sculpture. This desire is directly linked to what he learned at the foundry - he sculpts clay without losing sight of the stages that will lead from clay to bronze.
He has recently moved to the Auvergne – peaceful countryside conducive to his creativity. He now wishes to realize larger works in a studio with sufficient space to let his imagination run free.
Website: www.jeanbaptistemartin.com
