Centre D’art Contemporain de Lacoux
The artist from the Pays de Gex will be exhibiting works full of joy, exuberance and humour until 16 November.
There are undoubtedly some extraordinary jadins in the dépanement, with winking statues and rabbits wagging their white tails in rhythm. But they have hidden well. Jane Le Besque grows her own on the side of Saint Genis-Pouilly, at the back of the house where she lives with her family.
There must be some unusual things growing there, if we refer to the exhibition that the Centre d’ art contemporain de Lacoux is devoting to the young woman until November 16th. Especially through the recipes she wrote for the future generations of gourmets.
On the trail of the “Neolithic gathers”, from her long stops in her garden and in the Gesien mountains, she has drawn a recipe book published two years ago and entitled “Un soufflé de pollen”
This new soufflé “is a collection of receipts and drawings that I have sewn together through my romantic vision of our distant ancestors, the Neolithic gatherers” the painter explains with the greatest seriousness.
She proposes singular things, which will no doubt surprise and confuse the readers of Brillai-Savarin, such as Joël’s fresh mountain beer. It is, however, unavoidable, as long as you start by “digging a hole in the side of the mountain, preferably along a path, where there is something more than just trees and flowers”. Unless his readers prefer to try “elf cocktail ice cubes”, or “snowflake cream”. Her recipes, of course, she offers them in both French and English and are illustrated with her drawings, paintings, collages, calligraphies. Far beyond her love of the mountains and exuberance, first and foremost reveals a communicative “joie de vivre”.
This can be understood through the works of Jane Le Besque presented at Lacoux, including a set of gourmet plates and, made in Great Britain inspired from her collages.
Alice and her rabbit plunging into the enchanted burrow could not have dreamt of a better place to satisfy their sweet tooth.
But Hélène lailler, Lacoux’s directress, opened the whole centre to Jane Le Besque. She also presents folded, giant books, written/drawn in a beautiful complicity with the poet Joël Bastard, and cut-outs.
All these works display a passion for gessian nature, an assumed eccentricity and a vigorous humour.
In her work, admits Jane Le Besque, the flowers end up either in a dish or in a painting.
Recipes from “A soufflé of pollen”
The Christophe sandwich with cheese and wine
Ingredients:
Bleu de Gex, Gruyère cheese, red wine, a baguette of bread.
Recipe:
Crush the two cheeses together with wine with a fork until you obtain a paste that will not betray either the baguette or the mountain man.
Share this sandwich with your walking companion when you reach the summit.
Wild strawberries with cream
Ingredients:
Wild raspberry with cream
Wild mountain raspberries, mint stems, heavy cream, honey.
Recipe:
On a hot summer day, cook wild raspberries, the ones that grow on the mountainside. After a picnic with the children, take the raspberries that are left at the bottom of the basket, put them in a bowl with the fresh yellow cream and the honey, mix gently. Add a few leaves of wild mint. Leave to cool on a pile of snow so that the mint has time to perfume the fruit.
Eat in place before the end of the sun
