French artist discovers US by painting a stranger a week

BOSTON (AP) — New to Boston, Parisian artist Aurélie Galois took a deep breath, gathered her oil paints and ventured forth on a unique mission to get acquainted with her adoptive city:

The results — "Friday Face," a collection of all 52 spontaneous works and the poignant handwritten vignettes Galois scribbled about each of her subjects — are on display at the French Cultural Center in Boston.

"When you move to the U.S., you think you know the American culture but you don't — it's only what you know from famous people," she said.

Galois, 38, began the project as an experiment in May 2014, not long after moving to Massachusetts with her Harvard University scientist partner and their children.

Craving conversation, she was a regular at a local café when she realized the strangers around her were a means of discovery.

Amazingly, not a single person she approached shut her down — something she doubts could have happened back in Paris, where she worked as a magazine editor and journalist.

Without intending to, she had captured a cross-section of society very diverse in age, gender, race, ethnicity, faith and sexual orientation.

Galois said she discovered some common threads that became the ties that bind these snapshots: a sense of American patriotism and optimism; the gratitude of those who have immigrated here; the surprising preponderance of tattoos.