Villa Vaumas

Villa Vaumas is an artist residency and cultural center dedicated to the visual, performing and plastic arts. Its aim is to improve access to contemporary art and culture in general for the people of Normandy.

Through creativity, this innovative space in the region offers a multidisciplinary environment for artists, curators, critics, art historians and all those who believe in the importance of art, culture and education.

Eventually, Villa Vaumas will organize cultural and artistic events such as exhibitions, studio visits, painting classes, an open-air cinéma d'auteurs in summer, as well as the Festival de la Châtaigne every autumn.

Created in 2023, in Sainte Hélène-Bondeville, Haute-Normandie, the project was initiated by painter Vladimir de Vaumas. Villa Vaumas is located in a former 18th-century presbytery surrounded by century-old beech trees. The property comprises several buildings: a former bread oven transformed into four artists' studios, a stable used as an exhibition space, but also as a room for physical expression, and a spacious stable with multiple uses, prior to its forthcoming renovation as living space for artists.

In addition, a large, carefully tended garden features many species of local flowers and trees: hydrangeas, roses, rhododendrons, wisteria, snowdrops, daffodils, chestnut, hazelnut, cherry, raspberry, apple and pear trees, providing a haven for rural wildlife: hedgehogs, foxes, rabbits, owls and birds of all kinds.

Each year, the residence hosts two groups of artists in residence during the months of July and January. The selected artists will receive a follow-up of their project and will be put in touch with the socio-cultural context of the region. They will have the opportunity to organize activities related to their projects: exhibitions, readings, portfolio presentations, performances, etc.

Artists will be accommodated in individual rooms, and will have access to the site's various infrastructures in line with their projects, as well as to art tools and materials. They will also be able to borrow electric bikes to ride along the high cliffs bordering the English Channel, or to explore the Cauchoise countryside.

Sainte Hélène Bondeville is a small rural village surrounded by cereal fields and Normandy cow pastures. The village is just a few kilometers from Fécamp, a town famous for its pebble beach, its marina, the Musée des Pêcheries and the Palais de la Bénédictine, which serves as a distillery for the famous liqueur of the same name, but above all for its history with the Impressionist painters who vacationed here.