“Lavaux d’ombres”, a dialogue between poetry and drawing
The French-speaking poet and chronicler Thierry Raboud as well as the illustrator Tassilo Jüdt sign a beautiful book alongside Effeuilles editions. “Lavaux d’ombres” is a poetic ode composed of illustrations and verses, eighty pages that read like a walk.
For a year, Tassilo Jüdt and Thierry Raboud observed the terraces of Lavaux, from dawn to sunset, separately and together. Armed with their pencil, pen, your notebook and a good dose of sensitivity.
This landscape, Thierry Raboud has crossed many times by electric bike or on foot, always with the desire to find another Lavaux. A delicate and ambitious exercise. “It is an artistically saturated landscape. Many writers and artists have passed through it. Jacques Chessex said ‘a lake is like a great inkwell in which everyone has already dipped their pen’. How dare we add a layer on top of all the pre-existing layers? It is was quite a challenge for me.”
A page from the book “Lavaux d’ombres”, by Thierry Raboud and Tassilo Jüdt.
Gray pencil to extend the meeting
The birth of “Lavaux d’ombres” is a happy coincidence: Tassilo Jüdt, who always has a sketchpad with him, began to draw landscape postcards during his morning trips to his studio in Vevey. Fate wanted them to reach the hands of Thierry Raboud who, as soon as he received them, immediately felt the resonance of his poetry. Resonance that extends into the very structure of the drawing, because the sketches kept the starting line, i.e. the gray pencil.
Ten thousand terraces under the exact cymbal of the sun orchestrate the eternal summer
For Tassilo Jüdt, there are two reasons for this choice: “The work I started in Lavaux on the postcards was composed in gray pencil and I wanted to expand it. And then, it must be said that gray itself is good for poetry. When you put color, everything is interpreted and you know what time of day it is, even if it’s hot or cold. Whereas the gray pencil is similar to a black-and-white photograph, where we let the person who will see the image immerse himself in his own temporality,” he explains.
Thierry Raboud and Tassilo Jüdt share a wonderful relationship, the fruit of which is this beautiful book, full of mystery and light. As the collection progresses, the dialogue between letter and illustration becomes closer, like an echo between poet and designer.
Layla Shlonsky/mh
Thierry Raboud and Tassilo Jüdt, “Lavaux d’ombres”, available at Payot Bookstore in Vevey, La Fontaine Bookstore and Tassilo Jüdt’s website
