Prairie Laurent

Painted Ceramics Summer 2026

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La Serpente

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The First Arnaudville Table Française July 2006

This summer marks twenty years that I live in the Prairie des Femmes. In 2004 I began to come here and spend time as a camp and a wild place. « We’re going to the prairie » we’d say. 

 It was a dream place where a house was being raised. This house was a curiosity and then a wonder to me. No one had ever brought me to a new land and hand built me a home. The day before we married I found myself alone in the central room of the house. I sat on the fresh wooden floor with my back on the cypress tree pillar in the middle of the room and imagined the future that would pass in this room. This would be the room where I lived, celebrated every Christmas, conceived and raised children. Though I didn’t know it then, it was where I would become a woman of the prairie. 

 I moved here permanently on my wedding night, July 14, 2006. I remember the moon casting our enormous shadows on the wall as he carried me over the threshold through the French doors he’d kicked open. It was fine, the doors had holes for knobs. The next morning we had an open house party in our unfinished prairie cottage. My grandparents showed up earlier than anyone else the morning after my wedding night and made me scramble for my modesty. Everyone showed up later and were able to eat their own personal pints of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream, the groom’s favorite. We drank and played music surrounded by family and flower arrangements from the wedding. 

 The next week was dream like. I hand-washed my wedding dress and dried it in the porch. We ate at Myran’s Maison de Manger. We went to Nunu’s first potluck. We lived and worked in our new house to make sure it had a front wall, doorknobs, hot water and reliable electricity, all of which we had moved in without. I was preparing to begin as the new French teacher at nearby Beau Chêne high school while my new husband was a Cajun musician. He left for tour after our marriage. I was brave about it, but at 25 I was alone for the first time in the Prairie des Femmes. The house was sparse. There was no internet in those days. I boiled water in a red kettle for my baths and used a fancy bath oil, Mary Black by Florence Gunnarson, because it was all the soap that I had. I was sure that I had moved to the far countryside and bid goodbye to the cultural scene around the Blue Moon Saloon in Lafayette but soon I realized that nearby Arnaudville was emerging as its own cultural bastion, mainly through NuNu’s cultural arts center with George Marks and his mother Rita. There were events there such as the community pot luck, bands like Joe Hall and the Louisiana Cane Cutters, and at the end of July, a new French Table headed by Arnaudville matriarch Mavis Arnaud Frugé. I wrote the information about the a French table on the back of a card and pinned it to our post. I looked at that card every day as a beacon, my only social outing while I was alone and first French event before I became the « Madame » of Beau Chêne. 

 I attended the table that day and made acquaintances and friendships that I hold still today. Madame Mavis served us beignets she hand fried on the steep edge of Bayou Têche. I have continued to attend her monthly French tables at Nunu’s. It was there and through the strong French that still exists in Arnaudville that I was able to integrate into this community. Last year i was asked to lead the Arnaudville French Table and today I find myself in the unique position to be leading it 20 years to the day that I first attended as a newlywed. I find myself no longer married, but still choosing to stay in this place and serve this community and to stay in this house on the prairie that was my refuge all those years ago. I raise three beautiful sons in the Prairie des Femmes and still serve my community as Madame as I teach French to the girls of the Sacred Heart of Grand Coteau, just west of the prairie.

Alphonse Ardoin and the Zydeco Kingz

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My clear journal pouch with prairie paintings, iridescent cloud hydrocoloid patches, nail art patches, dried elderflower, found prairie ceramics, holographic cellophane, vintage wall paper, bracelet from the zydeco 

Prairie des Femmes Roman Frescos

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Je vois la lune belle et longue

​                                                                    prière de Inez Catalan 

   

Prairie des Femmes 2006/2026

July Ceramics

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Painted Ceramics July 11

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July Ceramics

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Si la Prairie Laurent m’appelle

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Jambes de Pluie July 8

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Prairie des Femmes Road July 8, 2026

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Prairie des Femmes Road July 6, 2026

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Prairie Artifacts from the Cane Field

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Siltborn

"Well the rumor is, back in the Indian days, when there was Indians in the territory... we not that far from Opelousas and there was an Opelousas tribe and they claim when the tribe would go to war, they'd come over here and hide their women. That's how they got the name of Prairie of the Women."

 

Siltborn

Cameron Escoyne and his grandfather | Deer Hunting The Louisiana Bayou | Project Hunt

PDF Instagram

 

Prairie Tags

 

Opelousas Road Jambes de Pluie

 

In the Fields of Prairie des Fermes

​I watch the fields of Prairie des Femmes. They rotate soybean and sorghum most years, with a fallow year in there also. Some of the old timers will call the prairie "Prairie des Fermes" (Prairie of the Farms) because it was and still is an agricultural enclave. Some of the most persistent stories about this place revolve around the women (les femmes) who ran the farms (les fermes) and dairies while the men left to work or fight. However this anecdote is true in most places around the country in war times. The wars that the neighbors have given vary from the Revolutionary War, War of 1812, Civil War, WW1 or 2. Further research suggests that the memory of the prairie is older than American wars and that the wars in question were of the native Opelousas, Chitimacha or Atakapas tribes and may not have been traditional wars at all. Prairie des Femmes was said to be the peace zone between tribes. It is also said the men hid the women back here, or simply went hunting and never came back. Some say they were nomadic and just moved along the Teche while leaving this prairie as the base village for the women and children. It's even more interesting when one considers that we are on the western edge of the Teche Escarpment and tucked behind the ancient alluvial bluffs of Grand Coteau, where the Mississippi itself flowed.  I also suspect that Grand Coteau was ceremonial grounds of some sort to the natives of this prairie.

This year there's a special atmosphere along the road because the close fields are in sugarcane and it creates the loveliest (for a prairie girl) vignettes while we search for broken ceramics in the late light of the summer afternoon.