STÉPHANE CHAUDESAIGUES IN CALDAGUÈS

Stéphane Chaudesaigues in Caldaguès. Stéphane Chaudesaigues has just acquired the Raynal house and property, in the middle of our burg. While watching a television program when he was 7 years old, the kid from Versailles understood there was a backstory associated with his last name; one having something to do with a town where underground waters come up to the surface and emerge the hottest in all of Europe. He wanted to know more about his singular last name and why it was hard to spell.

From Hot Water To Tattooing:

His biggest challenge may have been finding the village on a map, but since he found it, Stéphane Chaudesaigues has been obsessed with this thermal resort in the Cantal region of France. Over the years, he’s visited many times the area that bears his name until he was able to shed more light on his family tree and on all the questions that had been haunting him.

He’s been able to trace his family history back to the 17^th Century and the town of Fridefont, where his ancestor, Jean-Etienne was a forest ranger for the royal forest and married a woman named Marguerite Chanson. Since then, Stéphane Chaudesaigues has kept his dream of relocating to Caldaguès on the back burner and as chance would have it, it recently became a reality.

Once out of the school system, Stéphane taught himself how to tattoo, learning indirectly about the dynamic art by studying the work of classic painters and masters. He elaborated his trademark tattooing style on these solid artistic foundations and decided to travel to the United States to show off his work and display his skills at various American tattoo conventions. This bold move earned him international fame as a top tattoo artist.

Now, Stéphane and his brother, Patrick, have created the Chaudesaigues Award that will be given for the first time in 2012 during the Best Of The Midwest tattoo convention in Council Bluffs, Iowa, on February 10, 11 and 12. The award recognizes the career and artistic journey of a tattoo artist.

The Chaudesaigues family plans to settle in Caldaguès and Stéphane has a number of projects in store for the thermal town.

Paul Plagne