The Gobelins fountain in Guyancourt, west of Paris, no longer supplies water to the hamlet of Bouviers. Yet this is where the Bièvre, the famous river of the Paris region, rises before flowing some 30 kilometers to join the Seine and Paris. Many of France's rivers have had a turbulent history. The Bièvre is no exception. Rarely has a river been so abused, polluted and neglected by man.

In the 17^th century, the Bièvre became a dumping ground for dyeing factories, tanneries, taweries and slaughterhouses, and its meandering course was channeled and paved to meet industrial needs and growing urbanization. In the capital, the river even disappeared from the map, buried in 1912, dead from its foul-smelling state, to become a sewer. One could imagine a better destiny for a river that once attracted people with its rare, low-limestone water.

Downstream from the original Gobelins fountain lies Braque pond, the first of the ponds of the Minière. Cormorants had just landed in single file on a thick, uprooted tree trunk. These large, pale-bellied, black waterfowl would soon take to the skies in a single movement. The riverbanks are heavily wooded, part of the Versailles Forest and managed by the National Forests Office. On this Sunday morning in February, the paths were splashed with mud, the result of heavy rain. The sun was playing hide-and-seek in the winter-bare branches. Joggers and mountain bikers, their backs and faces smeared with mud, occasionally emerged from the scenery. In the 1960s, a very popular nautical center was created here. People came to swim at "Paris-on-the-beach". But it all came to a halt in 1977 for health reasons linked to the bad quality of water.

There seemed to be nothing in this dense forest estate to remind us of the river's tumultuous past. "When I look at this landscape, I can't forget the Bièvre's painful history. I see it like certain women's lives, abused, corseted, with unbandaged wounds," said French-American illustrator Suzanne Husky, who, walking with a worried brow, was sketching her impressions in a bright green notebook.

Trained at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Bordeaux, she went on to study horticultural landscaping at Merritt College in Oakland, California, and, more recently, agroforestry at the Arbre et Paysage 32 organization in Gers, southwestern France. This solid background has placed this naturalist illustrator at the frontier between art, poetry and environmentalism.

Naturalistic panels

Through her creative practice, Husky questions forms of domination over living things and describes how certain territories are disrupted by human activities. In this sense, the 48-year-old artist takes an activist look at water ways. Her watercolors diluted with spring water have but one objective: to revive the forgotten face of healthy rivers and the many species that once populated them.

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