French artist comes to carve in Felicity

One of France's most celebrated artists has traveled to the California desert to carve the history of humanity in granite.
 
Herve Saliou has temporarily traded painting on canvas for carving pictures and stories into long and massive stone monuments found there. Saliou is plying his artistic skills at the Center of the World. The tourist destination west of Yuma combines monuments to history with visions of art, tales from a children's book and an inspiring church on a hill.
 
Saliou came to this area at the invite of French-born Jacques Istel, the visionary behind the Center of the World. Istel is also mayor of the surrounding city, Felicity, Calif., which he created and named after his wife.
 
"What is interesting is that he and I had only known each other for one hour when I invited him here," Istel said.
 
A general from the French air force had wanted Saliou and Istel to meet and invited them to a meeting in Brittany. Also present was Saliou's brother, Louis, an accomplished sculptor. To make his point, Istel showed them a short film about the Center of the World, which was inspired by a children's book Istel wrote: "Coe the Good Dragon at the Center of the World."
 
"They said 'There is nothing like this going on anywhere in the world. We will donate two and half months of lives to the project,'" Istel said. "Now you have to admit that is something."
 
Saliou was recently given a gold medal of arts and sciences from the government of France.
 
"Now that's as high as you can go for an artist in France," Istel said. "I would say there are at least 20 (other) major prizes he has won, which establishes him as one of the major artists of our era, I would say. That is quite a pedigree."

On a recent day the Saliou brothers were working on two panels on a monument challenged with telling the history of humanity: "Sages of China" and "Greek Philosophers."
 
The daunting task of getting a species' history onto stone moved Saliou, who, upon seeing the monuments for the first time in person, said, "We're never going to get this done in our lifetime."
 
"This is an important site and very important for the future," Saliou said through an interpreter. "I feel something enormous for now and the future."

Istel expressed his dismay that the Center of the World's progress in recent years hasn't earned as much local attention as he would like.
 
"The French papers are screaming for news" about Center of the World, he said.
 
Recently, however, The Center of the World was treated as a front-page article in the L.A. Times. That article from April 2008 can be found online at www.FelicityUSA.com.
 
The project has also earned "extraordinary praise" in India, following such comments from the India Institute of Advanced Study. The institute provided Istel with much-needed Hindi translation for a certain monument.
 
"A famous scholar just said we have outdone Diogenes (a Greek biographer)!" Istel said, referring to comments made by Edward Tenner, a consultant with the Library of Congress who teaches at Princeton. "Isn't that wonderful?"


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Darin Fenger can be reached at dfenger@yumasun.com or 539-6860.