2019 – Support: Longboard. Technique: Textured background in paint, sand and earth. Colored paper folding. Charity sale for the benefit of Secours Populaire. Event organized by “Board to be solidaire”. At Agnès b.’s

As an artist, I create for myself, my balance, without thinking because it lives in me but also and above all to offer poetry, colors, light and hope in a world that I find too disconnected from the living, and which needs solidarity and optimism.
This is why I like to bring a small pebble to the building to put “my creation” at the service of associations that help nature or humans.
On several occasions “Board to be solidaire” contacted me to participate and I responded positively a few times. I like this association, born during the resistance of the Second World War, for its solidarity actions. I also liked working on this board support. Having practiced skateboarding and still practicing snowboarding, it is a medium that speaks to me.
If I were an heiress or a rentier I would spend much more time participating in projects of this type.

But visual artists are often contacted for this type of process. Because we often have big hearts, empathetic, with little interest in money, not seeing it as the most important thing…
Many say that artists can live on love and fresh water and do not live in the same world… And often, alas, the profit is donated to the association, but nothing to the artist.
We spend time and energy on it though…
Why? I don’t find that very fair. We wouldn’t ask a pastry chef for free desserts without compensation…
Yes, to help the associations, but yes, also to support the artists: we also have bills to pay, rent, our food, insurance, travel… in short, money doesn’t buy happiness but it contributes to comfort…
And I want to talk about this because many artists struggle with the RSA or to invoice very small amounts and it’s hard to make ends meet. We don’t have intermittent status, no unemployment possible, if we don’t issue invoices, we have no money… And some artists can end up going to the pop rescue themselves to get food. I give myself a role as spokesperson here that I assume, because I had the chance to discuss these points with many artists, because I come from a working-class background, because I was also lucky to earn a good living (working 70 hours a week) but also experienced the struggle when I had to stop so that a cancer would leave my body.
So yes, artists work for a better, different world, but don’t take them for cash machines…
Visibility does not fill the plate…

I will continue to actively participate at my level in solidarity, but not necessarily through charity sales. Systematically, I like to donate a percentage of my profit to humanitarian or environmental associations. I will continue to do so. Take the money where it is, to redistribute it. But by taking it from what I earn, it allows me to get out of precariousness a little (or more). Being in solidarity, yes, but with everyone, at all levels!

Thanks again to Board to be in solidarity for their invitation, to Agnès b. for hosting the event, and to the popular relief for its actions! You can make a donation to them! If you give them 10 euros, you will get 6 euros back in taxes! Your donation is equivalent to 4 euros, less than a pint of beer ;)

(During the covid, in Marseille, we opened a free hotline that families in trouble could contact: we were able to direct hundreds of people to food and hygiene distribution points: the popular relief was a great help to us… Because in difficult neighborhoods of Marseille, many families in an irregular situation could no longer work (construction site, cleaning, etc.) and the situations were dramatic)
A HUGE THANK YOU TO THESE ASSOCIATIONS AND ALL THEIR VOLUNTEERS!