Chemp

Chemp is a hamlet of Perloz, clinging to the mountainside above the Lys valley. For a long time it lived from its families, hard work and love of the land. Then it emptied. Today you meet shepherds, children and old women there… made of wood. It is the work of a sculptor, Pino Bettoni, who decided to bring the village back to life.

Chemp, a hamlet of Perloz almost abandoned

When Pino discovered Chemp, he fell for it: the high stone walls, the worn steps, the small windows opening onto the yards. But the village had been almost abandoned for years. Only a few elderly people still came up now and then. Walls were collapsing and weeds were taking over.

Putting the houses and paths back on their feet

Pino bought part of an old house and began to restore it. With his wife, Paola, and his friend Silvano Ferretti, he cleared the paths between the houses, pulled up the weeds and rebuilt walls loosened by water and frost. Little by little, the hamlet got its old face back.

An open-air museum of stone and wood

Pino placed his first statues where they seem always to have been: at stable doors, on door lintels, on the threshing floor. You meet the shepherd and his flock, the baby in its cradle, the old woman with her hens, the little match girl, the girl with her kite. And, more unexpectedly, a homeless man asleep on a cardboard bed.

More and more friends came. Pino invited other artists to carve for Chemp. Stone and wood, always paired in mountain houses, now grow old together.

“A dream carried by the wind” in Chemp

Pino likes to say that birds sing where there are people. His wish, shared by the association born of the project, is to hear them sing again at dawn above the roofs of Chemp. He calls it “a dream carried by the wind”.

Who is Pino Bettoni, the man behind Chemp?

Angelo Giuseppe Bettoni, known as “Pino”, was born in Carema, in the province of Turin. He lived in Pont-Saint-Martin, then in Donnas from 1967 to 1972, before settling in Perloz in 1984. He now lives in Chemp. Since childhood he has had what he calls the wood “bug”. He carves figures caught in simple everyday gestures, and works inspired by nature.