Meeting a sculptress in Montmartre

I'm always on the lookout for different ways to get beyond the monuments and museums and get a feel for real Paris.

Reading through the free section of www.bonjourparis.com, a subscription newsletter for people who love Paris, I noticed news of a program called "Meeting the French," (www.meetingthefrench.com) organized by Laurence Monclard, once a university student in Pennsylvania.

Monclard arranges B&B stays and dinners in Parisian homes; works with the tourist board to set up visits to butcher shops, bakeries and chocolate makers; and arranges visits with local artists.

This is how I happened to spend an hour and half one afternoon talking with Sophie du Buisson, 36, a sculptress who works in bronze, stone, clay and paper-mache in her studio and home in the hilltop artists' quarter of Montmartre.

I picked Buisson from a list of English-speaking artists who welcome visitors and sent a credit card payment of $6.50 over the Internet to Meeting the French to set up the appointment. Then I followed instructions to take the Metro to Montmontre, find the address, punch in a door code and "ring at the brown door at the end of the corridor on the first floor."

Buisson welcomed me into her studio, and over espresso and almonds at her kitchen table, we talked about her work, Paris, her husband's restaurant, her seven-month-old son, my work and our families.

She specializes in figurative art - sculptures of women, men and children- that lately has become more abstract as she strives to work social messages into her pieces and do "public art," such as a fountain she is making that evokes the struggle of people with rare muscular diseases.

Everything she makes starts with a found object like a pole lamp, a scooter or the piece of wire she bent in the form of a Christmas tree.

"I just look in the street at what I can find for free," she said.

"How long does it take to complete a piece?" I asked.

The real work is thinking through the design and the message she wants to convey. The fountain took a year of thinking and planning.

"To actually build something - nothing. Maybe two weeks, once you have it in your mind."

Buisson displays her pieces in Paris galleries and at her husband's restaurant, Les Artistes, 60 rue Didot in the 14th district.

Getting wired

No need to leave your laptop at home when traveling to Paris. Wi-Fi (pronounced Wee-Fee in France) hotspots are everywhere, although I've found that finding an unlocked connection isn't always easy. Paris has plans to have 80 percent of the city wired by 2010.

Otherwise, McDonald's is the easiest place to find accessible and free Wi-Fi. The one on the high-rent Boulevard des Capucines near the old Paris opera house is especially nice, with cozy booths and the French version of MTV at the tables.

The Starbucks two blocks away charges $2.60 a half hour, whether or not you buy a $4.50 latte to sip while sitting on a purple velvet chair under cut-glass chandeliers hanging from a gilded and frescoed ceiling. This is Paris after all. Buy a coffee and the table is your office for as long as you like. Cheap wooden tables and molded plastic chairs just wouldn't do.