PRESQUE ISLE — “Comme on fait son lit, on se couche.” (As you make your bed, so you must lie in it.” “Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.” (The more things change, the more they remain the same).
Maine artist and author Rhea Cote Robbins has dedicated the majority of her life to preserving her native Franco-American language and culture, most recently through the creative elevation of her mother’s everyday proverbs to artistic replication in a collage format.
In an exhibit running through May 5 at Crystal Compass Books, Cote Robbins displays dozens of Franco-American sayings used by her mother, a native of Wallagrass. Through the exhibit, “Maman Disait” (What maman said), Cote Robbins explores her artistic side in a celebration of her Franco-American heritage.
The exhibit, in French, takes us for a walk back to a time when a parent had an adage for every occasion.
Rhea’s mother Rita L. St. Germaine Côté (1919-1982) lived in Wallagrass from birth until she left Aroostook County at age 17. Though her mother moved first to Bangor and eventually to Waterville, memories of Wallagrass remained fondly in her blood the rest of her life. Many of the proverbs Cote Robbins resurrects through her exhibit “Maman Disait” are the same proverbs her mother and undoubtedly other Franco-American children grew up with and passed along to their youngsters. They engender a sense of familial warmth known to children whose parents reinforced the sometimes tough lessons in life that could best be realized through poignant proverbial expressions.
Using collages of mixed media – cutouts from period advertisements, garment labels, found objects, paint, cloth and photographs – Cote Robbins resurrects many of those proverbs and sayings with 39 framed art pieces. The work provides insight into the daily life and traditions of a typical Franco-American family in the first half of the 20th century.
“I believe the proverbs are important and could be used in many areas of passing on of family traditions and storytelling,” Cote Robbins said. “I wanted to celebrate my maman’s creativity with some of my own. I would like to see more art that is created with French language incorporated, so that the public displays in homes would reflect the bilingual, bicultural as home decoration – both inside and outside.”
Cote Robbins, who grew up in Waterville’s South End and published a book, Wednesday’s Child, about her childhood experiences in a Franco-American community, said she also undertook the proverbs project to develop her own understanding of her mother’s proverbs in a modern sense, “one which takes them out of the nostalgic realm and puts them into the living culture of today,” she said.
Cote Robbins lived with her family in Presque Isle for seven years and is a former art major at the University of Maine at Presque Isle.
Cote Robbins sought to create “a picture representation of the proverbs using collages, which allows for visual puns and interpretations and what they mean to me,” she said. “I wanted others to see these and to think about their own interactions with proverbs in their lives and to incorporate them in their daily living storytelling situations to revive this important tradition.”
The artist’s mother, Rita, was one of 17 children. Rita lived in Waterville all of her adult life and was an ‘ordinary’ Franco-American woman – a seamstress, who lived the culture on a daily basis, and spoke, read and wrote in both French and English, Cote Robbins recalled. She also was creative.
“There wasn’t anything she couldn’t sew, knit, crochet, hook, braid or quilt,” Cote Robbins said. “Her needle and thread and other sewing tools were her materials in expressing creativity.”
But what struck Cote Robbins most about those early childhood memories she has carried in her memory for decades was the pure simplicity of the proverbs and the regularity with which her mother sprinkled them about.
“Toward foibles, the fancy formidable and frank, she would pronounce the proverbs at will. I am shocked to find how many of the proverbs she knew that I remember having heard as daily fare,” Cote Robbins recalled.
“Something would happen. She’d walk by and in rapid-fire French express a proverb in response. I knew something special, something different had just been said. I would stop what I was doing and demand an explanation, a translation, because even though I understood French completely – no need for translation for most things said – but here, in her proverbs, was a language unfamiliar to me,” Cote Robbins continued.
“Sometimes, she’d try to translate, or explain, but mostly she’d say, ‘Oh, it’s just one of those old sayings they always used to say.’ And here she was repeating it to me out of her memory.”
Where have the proverbs gone from our lives? Cote Robbins wonders. Where do these artifacts of the cultures go when they become rare?
Cote Robbins said she hopes her exhibit helps viewers realize that everyone has access to the tradition of proverbs and sayings in their families, and they can create their own pieces, in whatever format – quilting, wall hangings, appliqué or woodworking – that reflect their proverbs and sayings.
“This show is not simply an exercise in nostalgia,” she said, “but how I choose to reclaim for myself the proverbs and to give meaning to them as I see them – part of the everyday magic of life” and an every-day part of a culture she wishes to preserve.
In conjunction with the exhibit “Maman Disait,” Cote Robbins also has assembled curriculum materials linked to Maine Learning Results, which she has made available for teachers in Maine. The Web site created around the exhibit, with proverbs and translations, and related curriculum materials can be accessed at www.fawi.net/proverbes/MamanDisait.html.
To see the exhibit, Crystal Compass Books, 422B Main St., Presque Isle, is free to visit and open Monday through Saturday from 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.
