Look Where You Want To Go

I don't know how people are dealing with the current situation completely.  I admit I find it challenging trying to think of a plan for the future. I can't see. My mind reels. I am a mother. The mother of a single child. I wish I could pour out my heart here but that is what journals are for!

I need to express but don't need an audience.

Facebook, Instagram won't do.

Here I am anonymous but also posting words I need to live by.

The co-dependent in me wants to fix everything.

Usually decisive, I freeze with the unknowing.

Move, move.

Movement frees 

Art becomes a necessity.

 

Black Lives Matter

I feel words are not enough to express my sorrow for the

ongoing horrific racism, ever-enduring.  I am an atheist but always I say a prayer 

for the black boys when I see them.  be safe, I silently whisper their way. I watch them to make sure that

they are being treated right. Sometimes I eye the policemen who are also watching them. My soul sinks and shivers with the burdens they do not always seem aware of.

xoxoxo  

Entrevue avec l'artiste Emmanuelle Jacques

Dans le cadre de la page Facebook de Gravure Montréal, je demande aux artistes des médias imprimés de donner un aperçu de leur travail et d'explorer l'impact que la gravure a eu sur leur processus créatif.
Voici la dernière interview d' Emmanuelle Jacques qui expose son projet Création de richesse / Labor of Love au centre d'artistes autogérés Arprim du 25 janvier au 22 février, 2020. Emmanuelle sera présente à Arprim le 30 janvier, 1, 6, 13, 15 et 20 février.
Emmanuelle avec Suzanne

AJM: Comment te décrirais-tu comme artiste?

EJ: Je ne suis pas certaine de bien comprendre la question. LOL!

AJM:LOL


Mom Art, Creation de richesse/Labour of Love

AJM: Cette série d'entrevues est principalement axée sur les artistes qui utilisent les arts imprimés à Montréal. Qu'est-ce que tu préfères de la vie à Montréal? Des endroits ou des souvenirs en particulier?

EJ: Ma première expérience comme artiste professionnelle a été une résidence à l’Atelier Graff, en 2006. Établi sur le Plateau-Mont-Royal depuis 1966, l'Atelier Graff était le lieu de travail privilégié de nombreux artistes en arts d'impression. Je capotais: j’allais travailler dans le même atelier que Julie Doucet et Dominique Pétrin ! Après cette résidence, j'ai continué à fréquenter l'Atelier Graff et au fil du temps, j'y ai rencontré tellement d'artistes (comme toi, Anna!) qui sont devenus des collègues, des ami·es et une source d'inspiration constante dans ma vie professionnelle. En 2016, l'Atelier Graff s'est joint au Cabinet, un centre d'artistes dédié à la photographie, et s'est installé dans Hochelaga sous le nom de L'imprimerie, centre d'artistes. Je suis très impliquée à L'imprimerie et je suis vraiment fière de participer à son développement. C'est presque comme une deuxième famille pour moi.

Un autre lieu que j'aime beaucoup est Arprim, un centre d'artiste qui a pour mission de diffuser les pratiques actuelles liées aux arts imprimés. Je me suis aussi impliquée dans ce centre pendant plusieurs années. C'est vraiment le meilleur endroit à Montréal pour découvrir les tendances actuelles en arts d'impression.


Real Artist, Création de richesse / Labour of Love

AJM: Qu'est-ce qui t'inspire? Ton inspiration vient-elle de la vie, de l'art, de la musique, de la littérature? Des écrivains, des films, des œuvres d'art préférés? Quelles sont tes influences et où crois-tu te situer dans l'histoire de l'art? Dans la lignée de quels artistes te situerais-tu?

EJ: Les artistes que j'aime n'ont souvent pas grand-chose à voir avec mon propre travail. De toute façon, je trouve l'exercice assez pénible d'essayer de me situer dans l'histoire de l'art. C'est comme si, en essayant de trouver ma place là-dedans, j'avais l'impression de me faire épingler comme un papillon. Je préfère laisser ce travail à d'autres, s'ils y tiennent vraiment. Disons que je trouve plutôt mes sources d'inspiration à l'extérieur du milieu de l'art. Ces temps-ci, parce je travaille sur un projet qui parle d'économie, de maternité et de travail invisible, je lis beaucoup sur ces sujets-là. Dans mes projets précédents, je m'intéressais à l'urbanisme, aux mouvements de cartographie sociale, à la politique locale, etc. Mais ça ne veut pas dire que je suis imperméable à ce qui se passe dans le milieu de l'art. Ça me motive énormément de voir les artistes autour de moi travailler sur leurs projets et avancer dans leur carrière. Plusieurs de mes collègues artistes sont des modèles pour moi.


Come Back, Création de richesse / Labour of Love

AJM: Des citations, des pensées, des philosophies de vie?

EJ: Dans son livre «La dette, 5000 ans d'histoire», l'anthropologue anarchiste David Graeber rejette la théorie économique qui soutient que l'humanité aurait d'abord inventé le troc, puis la monnaie, pour finir avec le crédit. Selon lui, très tôt dans l'histoire, le crédit aurait été à la base d'un réseau inextricable d'interdépendance entre les humains, alors que l'impossibilité d'évaluer avec exactitude la valeur des choses permettait de maintenir et de perpétuer ce réseau en permanence. En cristallisant la valeur précise des biens matériels et immatériels, l'arrivée de la monnaie aurait permis de régler instantanément ses comptes avec autrui au moment de chaque échange, et conséquemment, de briser ce réseau d'interdépendance qui a longtemps structuré la société. Le projet sur lequel je travaille en ce moment, Création de richesse/Labour of Love, s’inspire beaucoup de ce livre. En créant une monnaie sans valeur précise, qui sera distribuée gratuitement, j'imagine des façons de construire un tissu social où les échanges économiques et la création artistique seraient des moyens de prendre soin les uns des autres.
Création de richesse / Labor of Love


Hachurer le temps, Création de richesse / Labour of Love

AJM: Comment définis-tu ton langage visuel?

EJ: J'ai beaucoup de difficulté à définir mon langage visuel. Mes projets sont souvent visuellement très différents les uns des autres. Ils sont plutôt liés conceptuellement, ou à travers mes processus de création, plutôt que visuellement.


Trou, Création de richesse / Labour of Love

AJM: Quel est ton environnement idéal pour créer?

EJ: En résidence. Les résidences d'artiste sont un espace-temps protégé pour travailler sur des projets qui m'ont souvent pris beaucoup de temps à concevoir en amont. J'arrive difficilement à faire de la place pour la création dans ma vie quotidienne. J'ai besoin de me plonger dans mes projets sur de longues périodes. Malheureusement, la plupart des résidences d'artistes ne sont pas conçues pour accueillir les artistes avec des enfants. Alors je me débrouille autrement, en m'insérant des toutes sortes d'interstices, en m'inventant des résidences «autogérées» près de chez moi, par exemple.


Théorie, Création de richesse / Labour of Love

AJM:Si tu devais décrire ta pratique artistique en un mot, ce serait quoi?

EJ: Lentement.


Recherche, Création de richesse / Labour of Love

AJM: Pourquoi fais-tu ce que tu fais? Quelle est ta motivation pour créer? Qu'est-ce qui te fait avancer? Comment l'art s'intègre-t-il dans ta vie? Comment ta vie artistique et ta vie quotidienne sont-elles liées?

EJ: Pour être honnête, je ne sais pas vraiment. Des fois, j'ai l'impression que c'est un peu comme une maladie mentale. C'est là et j'essaie juste de faire du mieux que je peux avec ça. Il y a tellement d'autres choses que j'aime faire dans la vie. Si je pouvais vivre sans faire de l'art, je serais sûrement heureuse à faire n'importe quoi d'autre. Jardiner, par exemple. En tout cas, ce serait pas mal moins angoissant!


Spécialistes, Création de richesse / Labour of Love

AJM: Comment les arts d'impression ont-ils influencé ta pratique artistique? As-tu des idées ou des prises de conscience lorsque tu imprimes?

EJ: Les arts imprimés m'ont influencée de tellement de façons! Mes méthodes de travail en sont directement héritées : ma prédilection pour les procédés rudimentaires, le travail processuel, l'accumulation de gestes, la production de multiples, l'inscription dans la durée, etc. Quand j'utilise la couleur, je pense à chaque couleur séparément, comme quand on utilise des calques. Ça m'a amenée à considérer la couleur de façon conceptuelle plutôt que pour ses qualités formelles. Même le fait de travailler dans un atelier collectif a sûrement quelque chose à voir avec mon intérêt pour l'art relationnel. J'ai besoin du contact avec d’autres personnes dans mon processus de création.


Féministe, Création de richesse / Labour of Love

AJM: Quels sont les avantages et les inconvénients de l'art imprimé?

EJ: Avantages: une multiplicité des possibilités, des qualités visuelles uniques, du temps pour réfléchir en répétant continuellement les mêmes gestes.

Inconvénients: les aspects techniques prennent souvent le dessus sur tout le reste.


Superwoman, Création de richesse / Labour of Love

AJM: Penses-tu qu'il existe des traits communs chez les artistes qui pratiquent les arts d'impression, dans leur façon d'être?

EJ:Oui. Une prédilection pour la répétition: gestes, motifs, multiples.

La collégialité.

Une fascination irrépressible (et parfois insupportable) pour les aspects techniques des œuvres.

Ah oui, et aussi un goût douteux pour les jeux de mots.

AJM: L'une des choses que je préfère à propos de l'art imprimé est la quantité d'invention qui est toujours intégrée au processus. C’est peut-être la norme de combiner des médiums de nos jours, mais je crois que les arts imprimés ont tendance à encourager les approches multidisciplinaires. Comment la multidisciplinarité s'insère-t-elle dans ton travail? Est-ce que tu y penses? Qu'est-ce que le mélange des médiums t'apporte? Est-ce que c'est important pour toi?

EJ: La question de la disciplinarité occupe une place assez particulière dans le milieu de l'art. C'est un peu un passage obligé, de nos jours, de s'identifier comme artiste multi – ou inter, ou trans – disciplinaire. Même si je ne pratique pas uniquement les arts d'impression, j'ai toujours été hésitante à m'identifier comme artiste multidisciplinaire, même si j'intègre des éléments d'art relationnel, d'écriture, ou que je pratique la cartographie en dilettante, par exemple. Quand j'ai rencontré Myriam Suchet, titulaire à l'époque de la chaire d'études de la France contemporaine de l'Université de Montréal, elle m'a introduit à son champ d'études: l'indisciplinarité. J'ai trouvé ça assez libérateur d'écarter le concept même de discipline, à l'intérieur mais aussi à l'extérieur du champ des arts visuels. Une fois, je ne me souviens plus trop dans quel contexte, quelqu'un m'a qualifiée de «cartographe». J'étais vraiment gênée, mais dans le fond, je préfère échapper aux définitions que d'avoir à me soucier de mélanger ou de créer des ponts entre les disciplines. Ces définitions-là, quant à moi, ça sert surtout à cocher des petites cases dans les formulaires des conseils des arts. J'en reviens encore au papillon épinglé. Ça ne m'intéresse pas tellement, mais si on veut vraiment le savoir, je m'identifie comme une artiste visuelle, tout simplement.

AJM: Les arts d'impressions ont-ils une pratique opposée?

EJ: Je ne pense pas, non. Les arts d'impression sont liés à tellement d'autres formes d'art.

AJM: À mes yeux, tes oeuvres semblent utiliser les arts imprimés pour créer un monde immersif pour le spectateur. Quel rôle le spectateur joue-t-il dans ton travail? Comment veux-tu que les spectateurs se sentent? Qu'est-ce que tu voudrais qu'ils retiennent après avoir vu tes projets ?

EJ: Dans mes œuvres installatives, une multitude de détails visibles de près seulement incitent le spectateur à recréer physiquement cet effet de zoom-in zoom-out qu'on utilise familièrement dans Google Maps, par exemple. Ça fait un peu premier degré comme ça, mais c'est une façon de créer un rapprochement. C'est aussi ce genre de rapprochement que je cherche à créer quand je fais des livres d'artiste: prendre dans ses mains, toucher, feuilleter, ça demande un contact intime entre l'objet et la personne qui le regarde. Mes projets récents ont commencé par une démarche relationnelle, au cours de laquelle différentes personnes ont pris part aux processus de création. Ces collaborations m'ont permis de créer un contact intime avec les gens en les incluant dès le départ dans mon travail. C'est vers ce genre de rapprochement que je me dirigeais depuis longtemps, je pense.

AJM: Le sentiment que je ressens quand je regarde ton travail est celui d’une belle harmonie et d’un ordre formels. Un monde créé par l'édition, la répétition, l'expertise technique et le travail acharné. En même temps, j'ai toujours le sentiment que tes projets posent des questions sérieuses et remettent en question les traditions culturelles. Les erreurs ne sont pas apparentes. Quel rôle le chaos, la structure, la perfection et la beauté jouent-ils dans ton travail? Comment interprètes-tu le contact humain dans tes compositions?

EJ: J'établis souvent des structures et des méthodes très précises pour donner une direction à mon travail, mais malgré moi, le chaos finit toujours par s'installer quelque part. C'est un peu comme avec les enfants. Ah ah ah!

Honnêtement, tout ce que je voudrais, des fois, c'est juste faire des belles choses, mais ça ne me satisfait pas vraiment. C'est sûrement pour ça que je m'invente toujours des systèmes compliqués pour me justifier. Le problème, c'est qu'il arrive toujours un moment où je me sens coincée dans ces systèmes, alors je ne m'y plie jamais avec beaucoup de rigueur. En regardant de plus près, on voit bien que tout est un petit peu tout croche. C'est juste que dans l'ensemble, on ne le remarque pas.

En ce qui concerne les questions sérieuses dont tu parles, c'est vrai que mes projets sont devenus de plus en plus politiques ces dernières années. Mais je n'ai pas vraiment envie de prendre un ton moralisateur, alors je préfère laisser parler les autres à travers ces structures que je mets en place. En 2017, j'ai fait un projet de cartographie relationnelle dans un centre communautaire à l'Île-des-Soeurs. Le projet consistait à créer, sur place, une carte subjective du quartier qui rassemblait les histoires racontées par les citoyens qui passaient pendant que je travaillais. Ça a l'air bien innocent, comme ça, mais cartographier de charmants petits souvenirs peut tomber assez facilement dans le commentaire politique. Les petites anecdotes toutes cutes de rencontres avec des animaux, par exemple, emmenaient souvent la discussion vers des sujets plus sérieux comme la destruction de l'environnement. À un moment donné, je jasais avec un col bleu et on a commencé à parler du contraste entre les grosses maisons de riches sur l'île et celles des quartiers populaires de la «terre ferme», comme il disait. Il m'a dit quelque chose du genre: «Pour être riche comme ça, il faut voler et tuer des gens. Crois-moi, je sais de quoi je parle.» J'étais bouche bée. Les gens peuvent être beaucoup plus radicaux qu'on le pense quand on ne leur dit pas qu'on s'intéresse à la politique.

Pareil avec mon projet Creation de richesse/Labour of Love, C'est très politique, mais disons que j'aborde le sujet en douceur, en buvant du thé en en mangeant des biscuits. C'est plus facile comme ça.

AJM: Quels rôles le temps / la couleur // le rythme / les énergies collectives / la communauté / le contexte culturel / la culture québécoise / le contrôle / l'autorité / la résistance / la permanence / la temporalité / le travail acharné / le travail / joue-t-il dans tes projets?

EJ: Tous les concepts que tu as nommés jouent un rôle assez important dans mon travail, sauf peut-être la culture québécoise. Je m'intéresse surtout à à la culture d'un point de vue local, voire hyperlocal.

AJM: Pourquoi te bats-tu? Est-ce que tu as un message à passer avec ton travail? Qu'essaies-tu de dire et à qui t'adresses-tu? Pour qui crées-tu ton travail? Quels sont les thèmes de conversation des personnes confrontées à ta pratique?

EJ:Je ne dirais pas que je me bats pour quoi que ce soit. Je trouverais ça prétentieux envers ceux et celles qui se battent vraiment pour une cause. Les artistes aiment beaucoup parler de prise de risques, mais il n'y a pas beaucoup d'artistes qui prennent de vrais risques avec leur art, en tout cas ici au Canada. J'espère quand même susciter des discussions et amener mes idées dans le monde.

Avec mon projet Création de richesse/Labour of Love, j'ai eu la chance de discuter avec des femmes d'âges et d'origines vraiment variées. C'est comme si leur expérience de la maternité combinée à leur travail d'artiste m'avait fait l'effet d'un prisme grossissant sur les inégalités qui persistent dans notre société. La maternité exacerbe toutes les autres formes de discrimination que vivent les femmes. C'est de ça dont j'ai envie de parler en ce moment.

AJM: Quel est l'élément le plus important pour qu'une œuvre soit réussie? Quelles qualités t'attirent? Des œuvres sur lesquelles tu reviens sans cesse?

EJ:Il faut qu'elle soit belle et qu'elle me fasse réfléchir en même temps. J'aime quand il y a plusieurs niveaux de lecture.

AJM: Comment penses-tu que ta pratique a changé au fil des ans? Pourquoi?

EJ: Moins technique, plus politique.

AJM: Quel projet as-tu préféré faire? Pourquoi?

EJ: C'est comme si tu me demandais lequel de mes enfants j'aime le plus. Je ne peux pas répondre à ça! Mais je peux te dire que l'aspect relationnel de mon travail devient de plus en plus important pour moi. Peut-être parce ma vie sociale est vraiment réduite depuis que j'ai des enfants (LOL!), peut-être parce que ça m'aide à échapper au narcissisme ambiant du milieu de l'art, je ne sais pas. Tu ne penserais peut-être pas ça parce que je m'exprime assez facilement en public, mais pour les petites conversations mondaines, je suis assez nulle en fait. Mes projets relationnels sont un prétexte pour entrer en contact avec les autres. Ça marche comme par magie. Tu ne peux pas imaginer les conversations que j'ai eues, avec des enfants, des personnes âgées, des travailleurs, des parents, des sans-abris, des politiciens… des gens avec qui je n'aurais jamais parlé normalement. C'est fou! Il y en a qui m'ont raconté des détails vraiment très personnels de leur vie. Pareil avec Création de richesse/Labour of Love. J'ai réussi à plonger vraiment vite dans des discussions assez profondes. Je ne suis pas certaine de savoir exactement où se situe l'art là-dedans, mais je suis vraiment émue quand j'y repense.

AJM: Quels sont tes projets actuels et à venir que nous devrions connaître?

EJ: En ce moment, je termine une résidence à L'imprimerie pour travailler sur mon projet Création de richesse / Labour of Love. Ce projet-là a commencé quand quand je me suis fait désinviter d'une triennale de livres d'artistes parce que la commissaire ne voulait pas que je vienne avec mon bébé. Ça faisait déjà un bout de temps que je m'intéressais à l'économie et que j'avais cette envie d'imprimer de l'argent. Ce n'est pas vraiment mon genre d'utiliser une émotion viscérale comme moteur de création, mais là, j'étais vraiment fâchée, et c'était la seule façon de me calmer les nerfs un peu. C'est comme ça que j'ai décidé de créer une monnaie à l'effigie d'artistes qui conjuguent leur métier à leur rôle de mère.

C'est articule qui a été le premier centre d'artiste à me soutenir dans ce projet, en m'accueillant pour une résidence durant laquelle j'ai aménagé de lieux de rencontre où des séances de portraits servaient de prétexte à discuter des ambitions de ces femmes, des obstacles qu’elles rencontrent et des idées pour améliorer nos conditions de vie et de création.

En parlant du sujet sensible de la maternité, je voulais aborder des enjeux politiques, dans une perspective féministe et libertaire: échanges économiques, relation au pouvoir, organisation du travail, culture DIY, recherche de liberté, la résistance à l’oppression. En puisant dans l’expérience de mes collaboratrices, j'entrevois un système qui valoriserait non pas la production et l'accumulation de capital, mais plutôt le travail de «care», ou de reproduction sociale. Ça, c'est ce qui, selon Joan Tronto, permet de maintenir, perpétuer et réparer notre monde: l'éducation, les soins, la culture, la protection de l’environnement, etc.

Les mères et les artistes sont confinées dans cette économie parallèle depuis si longtemps qu’elles ont développé une expertise essentielle pour renverser ce modèle. Je m’approprie donc le rôle commémoratif de l’argent, et le retourne sur lui-même pour formuler une critique de ce système d’échange, dans une charge symbolique qui relie pouvoir financier et luttes féministes. Comment les mères participent-elles à la création de richesse? Et les artistes? Quelle est la valeur du travail invisible, non rémunéré? Peut-on trouver sa place dans le modèle économique actuel? Et dans le milieu de l'art? Quels sont les modèles alternatifs? Il est temps de reconsidérer la valeur des choses en d'autres termes qu'économiques, et ça a toutes les chances de se produire à travers les luttes féministes.

En résidence à L'imprimerie, j'ai organisé une deuxième série de rencontres, puis j'ai utilisé les portraits et les citations tirés de ces rencontres pour concevoir une monnaie que j'ai imprimée sur la belle presse Vandercook de L'imprimerie. J'avais tellement hâte de l'utiliser! Assemblés en liasses, les billets forment un livre d'artiste, qui sera distribué à mes collaboratrices lors du lancement au Magasin d'Arprim en janvier 2020. Par la suite, le public sera invité à venir me rencontrer pour discuter d'art, de maternité, d'économie, et en particulier des modes de diffusion de l'art en marge d'un contexte marchand, en échange d'un exemplaire de mon livre.

L’idée d’imprimer de l’argent est un vieux fantasme d'imprimeur (et d’anarchiste!), mais c’est aussi un prétexte pour retrouver le plaisir de créer en revenant au dessin plus classique, en m'amusant avec un Spirographe pour dessiner des motifs en guillochis un peu rétro, en découvrant l'autre et en me penchant sur des sujets qui me préoccupent depuis des années.

Trouver du plaisir dans la création peut sembler aller de soi, mais ce jamais si évident. Le milieu de l’art met une pression énorme sur les artistes pour créer des oeuvres avec une signature reconnaissable, en parfaite cohérence avec leur pratique. Ce système s’est institutionnalisé et soumis à une logique économique qui valorise la productivité souvent au point d'asphyxier la créativité. Avec une famille à soutenir, le temps manque pour le travail «non-productif» comme la recherche. L'équilibre est précaire entre le besoin de travailler pour un revenu et la liberté nécessaire à la création. J'essaie de garder le plaisir en tête ces jours-ci.

AJM: As-tu des trucs de survie pour les artistes? Ou des conseils pour les artistes débutants? Que fais-tu pour rester inspirée? As-tu des observations ou des conseils pour naviguer dans le monde de l'art?

EJ: Travailler dans un atelier collectif. S'impliquer dans un centre d'artistes. Ne pas se décourager. Ça ne devrait pas être comme ça, mais il faut travailler sans relâche. Ça m'a pris du temps à comprendre, mais il faut savoir s'arrêter aussi, des fois. Et d'avoir du plaisir aussi! Des fois on travaille tellement fort qu'on oublie que c'est ça l'essentiel.

AJM: Où est le meilleur endroit pour nous te trouvons en ligne?

EJ: Je suis plutôt anachronique ---> emmanuellej.wordpress.com

AJM: Des sites Web ou des ressources inspirantes que nous devrions connaître?

EJ: Ces temps-ci je suis une page sur Facebook qui s'appelle Mothers in Arts. En fait, je crois que c'est toi, Anna, qui m'avait fait découvrir cette page. J'y trouve toutes sortes de bonnes lecture pour mon projet en cours.

Elles ont aussi un site web ---> mothersinarts

Plus des oeuvres par Emmanuelle:


Histoires Croisés, 2017


Confidences montréalaises, 2018


Promenades interstitiales


Lieux commons


Lieux commons Naufrages


La création de l'univers

Printmaking in Montréal: An interview with Emmanuelle Jacques

As part of the Gravure Montréal Facebook page I ask print media artists to provide some insight into their work and explore the impact that printmaking has had on their creative process.
Here is the latest interview with Emmanuelle Jacques who is currently exhibiting her project Création de richesse / Labour of Love at the artist run centre Arprim
Emmanuelle with Suzanne

AJM: How do you like to explain yourself as an artist?

EJ: I'm not sure I understand the question. LOL

AJM:LOL


Mom Art, Creation de richesse/Labour of Love

AJM: This interview series is primarily focused on print media artists linked to Montreal. What is your favourite thing about living in Montreal? Any preferred spots or memories?

EJ: My first professional experience as an artist, in 2006, was a residency at Atelier Graff, a printmaking studio established in the Plateau-Mont-Royal since 1966. I was so excited: I was going to work in the same place as Julie Doucet and Dominique Pétrin! I kept working there after my residency and over the years I met so many artists (including you, Anna!) who became dear colleagues and friends and a huge source of inspiration in my professional life. In 2016, Atelier Graff merged with Le Cabinet, an artist-run center dedicated to photography, and moved in Hochelaga to form L'imprimerie, centre d'artistes. As co-president of the board, I am very proud to be part of what L'imprimerie has become. It's almost like a second family for me.

Another place I am very fond of is Arprim, centre d'essai en art imprimé, an artist-run gallery dedicated to print-related contemporary art. I was also involved on the board for several years. If you want to see cutting edge print media art in Montreal, it's the place to go!


Real Artist, Création de richesse / Labour of Love

AJM: Which artists's work or what inspires you ? Does your inspiration come from life, art, music, literature? Any favourite writers, films, artworks? Who are your influences and where do you think you fit in with the timeline of artists. Whose work do you feel you are following and continuing the same line of inquiry as.

EJ: Usually the art I like has little to do with my own work. But I do find inspiration in other artists on a professional level. I look at the way they lead their careers and that inspires me to put myself to work. I consider many of my fellow artists as rolemodels. As for my sources of inspiration, I mostly find them outside the art world. For my latest project Création de richesse/Labour of Love, I'm interested in economy, motherhood, invisible work, so I read a lot about that kind of things. I was inspired by the work of so many women I felt like I had to set up a little salon with a library and artwork by other artists to share them with people alongside my project. In my previous projects, I was into urbanism, social cartography, local politics, etc. It changes from a project to another.


Come Back, Création de richesse / Labour of Love

AJM: Any favourite quotes, thoughts, philosophies of life?

EJ: My current project Création de richesse/Labour of Love draws of lot of inspiration from anarchist anthropologist David Graeber's book Debt: the First 5,000 Years. In this book, he denies the mainstream economic theory claiming that humanity would have invented barter first, then money, to finally come up with credit. According to him, very early in history, credit was at the base of an inextricable network of mutual dependancy between humans, as the impossibility to exactly assess the value of things constantly maintained and perpetuated this network. The arrival of money cristallized the precise value of material and immaterial goods, and by doing so, allowed people to square accounts on the spot while trading. For David Graeber, “squaring accounts means that the two parties have the ability to walk away from each other”. Since then, this network of mutual dependency has become more and more fragile.


Hachurer le temps, Création de richesse / Labour of Love

AJM: How would you define your visual language?

EJ: It is difficult for me to define my visual language. I usually have several ongoing projets at the same time, each usually quite different visually from the other. They relate more on a conceptual level, or through the process I go through for their creation, rather than visually.


Trou, Création de richesse / Labour of Love

AJM: What is your ideal environment for creating?

EJ: Within the context of an artist residency. That allows me to secure time and space to work intensively on a project I've usually spent a lot of time thinking about beforehand. I have a hard time finding space for art in my daily life. I need long periods of time to immerse myself in my work. Unfortunately, most artist residencies are not conceived to accommodate artists with families.


Théorie, Création de richesse / Labour of Love

AJM:If you were to boil your art practice down to one word what would it be?

EJ: Slow.


Recherche, Création de richesse / Labour of Love

AJM: Why do you do what you do? What is your motivation to create? What keeps you going? How has art factored into your life? How are your art practice and life connected?

EJ: I don't know honestly. Sometimes I feel like it's like a curse or a pathology. It's there and I just try to get the best I can out of it. I like so many other things, if I could live without art I think I'd be happy to do something else, like gardening maybe. That would cause me so much less anxiety!


Spécialistes, Création de richesse / Labour of Love

AJM: How has printmaking influenced your art practice? Any thoughts or awarenesses that arise when you are creating through print practices?

EJ: Printmaking has influenced the way I work in so many ways! My predilection for process-based and labour intensive work, the way my projects are slowly built over time using repetitive gestures and rudimentary techniques, the production of multiples, are all modus operandi inherited from printmaking. When I use color, I think of them separately, as if on different layers. That lead me to use color for conceptual reasons rather than for their formal qualities. I think even working in a collective studio might have something to do with my attraction for relational art. I really need contact with other people to go forward with my projects.


Féministe, Création de richesse / Labour of Love

AJM: What do you consider the pros and cons in printmaking?

EJ: Pros: potential for multiples and massive dissemination, unique visual qualities, time to think while you repeat the same gestures over and over Cons: the technical aspects of printmaking are often overwhelming everything else


Superwoman, Création de richesse / Labour of Love

AJM: Do you think there are common traits amongst printmakers and how they are in the world?

EJ: A predilection for repetition: repetitive gestures, repeated motifs, multiples.

Collegiality.

An irrepressible (and sometimes really annoying) fascination for technical aspects of artwork.

Oh, and also a dubious taste for puns.

AJM: One of my favourite things about printmaking is the amount of invention that is always incorporated into the process. Perhaps it is the norm to combine mediums these days but I find printmaking tends to encourage a multi-disciplinary approach. How does multidisciplinarity enter into your work? Do you think about it? What does the mixture of mediums offer you? Does it matter?

EJ: The question of disciplinarity is such an issue in the art world. It seems like it's a must nowadays to label yourself as a multi - or inter, or trans- disciplinary artist. Although I never identified as a printmaker in the traditional sense of the term, I always thought it would be a scam to call myself a multidisciplinary artist, even if I incorporate elements of relational art, urbanism or text, for example, into my work. Just writing those words make me feel like a fraud. When I met researcher Myriam Suchet, who was Titulaire de la Chaire d'études de la France contemporaine of Université de Montréal at the time, she introduced me to her field of research: indisciplinarity. It was such a relief for me to put aside the very concept of discipline altogether. It allows so much more freedom to just not define what disciplines you're working with than caring about the mixture or the creation of bridges between them.

AJM: Does printmaking have an opposite practice?

EJ: No. Printmaking is connected with so many art forms.

AJM: In my eyes you work seems to use printmaking to create an immersive world for the viewer. What role does the viewer play in your work? How do you want them to feel and notice? What thoughts would you like people to take away after experiencing your work?

EJ: I mostly work in very small-scale but when I have the opportunity to occupy space, I like to create large-scale work that attracts you from far away but that you can only really appreciate when you get closer. I have a maniac attention for detail that forces the viewer to experience in real life that zoom in zoom out action we are so familiar with when we use Google Maps, for example. My recent projects required to engage in a relation with people within my creation process. That allowed me to create that intimate connection with the viewer I think I was longing for.

AJM: The feeling I get when I look at your work is one of a beautiful formal harmony and order. A world that is created through editing, repetition, technical expertise and hard work. At the same time I feel always that your work is asking some tough questions and questioning cultural traditions. Mistakes are not apparent. What role does chaos, structure, perfection and beauty play in your work? How do your interpret the human touch in your compositions?

EJ: I usually try to follow a structured pattern in my work but I feel like chaos quickly steps into the process. I guess I need to establish some rules to give myself a direction but there is always a breaking point where I get tired of it and loosen up. Otherwise I grow bored.

Honestly, I think all I want is to make beautiful things but I feel awkward about it. This is probably why I always create overarching systems around it to justify myself. But systems are so oppressive. I'm not disciplined enough to comply with them. In fact, I'm just faking it. If you look closer, you'll notice all the mistakes anyways. You just don't see them overall.

As for the tough questions you're talking about, my work has become more political over the last couple years. I just don't like to be too bold about it, so I let those thoughts emerge by themselves from that structure I set up to begin with. In 2017, I did a relational cartography project in a community center on l'Île-des-Soeurs. The project consisted in creating, on site, a subjective map of the neighbourhood that gathered stories told by citizens passing by as I was working. It passes for an innocent endeavour, but mapping charming little memories can quickly get political. What starts with nostalgic anecdotes about animal sights, for example, often evolves in discussions about the destruction of the environment. At some point, I was chatting with a blue collar and we started talking about the contrast between million-dollar houses on the island and the working-class areas on the “mainland”, as they call it. He told me something like: “To be rich like that, you need to rob and kill people. Believe me, I know what I am talking about.” I was flabbergasted. People get way more radical than you'd think when you don't mention you're into politics.

As with my current project Creation de richesse/Labour of Love, it's riddled with political content, but it came up very subtly in my conversations with women as we casually discussed over tea and cookies about our experience of maternity in the art world. It's a very sensitive subject but I think tough questions are more easily addressed with gentleness.

AJM: What roles does time/colour//rhythm/collective energies/community/ cultural context/ Quebecois culture/ control/ authority/ resistance/permanence/ temporality/ hard work/labour/play in your work?

EJ: Maybe you should write my artist statement for me! LOL I think all those concepts you named play an important part in my work, except maybe the culture québécoise. I address culture in a rather hyperlocal way.

AJM: What are you fighting for? Does your work have a single message or agenda? What are you trying to say and who are speaking to, who do you create work for? What are the conversation themes from people experiencing your work?

EJ: I wouldn't say I'm fighting for anything. I feel it would be presumptuous towards those who are actually really fighting for something. I don't think any artists here in Canada are actually taking real risks making art. I do hope that I can spark discussions and bring some ideas into the world though. You used the word “microactivist” in that project we are working on together and I like it a lot. Also when you said we are both “fascinated with the stories of the unsung and that our art practices act to fill perceived holes in history and contemporary society”.

AJM: What is the most important element of a work for it to be successful for you? What qualities appeal to you? Any works that you keep coming back to?

EJ: It has to be beautiful and meaningful at the same time. It strikes you right away.

AJM: How do you think your work has changed over the years? Why?

EJ: Less technical, more political.

AJM: What has been your favourite work to do? Why?

EJ: It's like you're asking me which one of my children I love the best. I can't answer that! But I can say the relational aspect of my work is getting more and more important for me. Maybe it's because I have such a lousy social life since I have kids (LOL!), maybe it's because it helps me to escape the narcissism and self-centeredness of being an artist, I don't know. You probably wouldn't say that because I'm not afraid to talk in public, or to voice my opinions, but I am awfully lame with strangers! Artwork gives me a pretext to engage in conversations with people. It works like magic! You wouldn't believe the people I met during my relational cartography projects. Kids, elders, workers, students, parents, homeless people, politicians. People I would never have talked to normally. Some of them told me very personal things about their lives. Same with Creation de richesse/Labour of Love. I was able to dive right away into really deep conversations. I'm not sure exactly where the art stands in there but I feel very emotional about it.

AJM: What are your current and upcoming projects we should know about?

EJ: In 2018 I did an artist residency at articule, to start a project called Création de richesse/Labour of Love. I continued the project in 2019 in residency at L'imprimerie, centre d'artistes. During both residencies, I created a meeting space where portrait sittings were an excuse to engage in conversations with artists who are also mothers to talk about their experience, their ambitions, the obstacles they face, and to imagine solutions to improve our creative conditions. The intimate and sensitive subject of maternity raises political issues, that I address in this project through a feminist and anarchist perspective: economic exchanges, power relations, work organisation, DIY culture, freedom seeking, resistance to oppression.

With this project, I appropriate the commemorative role of money, in a symbolic charge linking economic power and feminist struggles, and I turn it on its head to articulate a critique of this long-established trading system. How are mothers participating in the creation of wealth? And the artists? What is the value of unpaid work? Can one make their own space in the current economic model? And in the art milieu? What are the alternative models? Time has come to reconsider value in terms other than economical, and all the chances are that it will happen through feminist struggles. Women, and especially mothers, have been shoved into a parallel economy for so long that it forced us to develop the skills and knowledge that will be required to smash capitalism.

During the residency at L'imprimerie, I used the portraits and quotes from the discussions to design a currency. It turned out as a 108-pages artist book, printed on a Vandercook press at a 350 print-run and bundled with elastics to look like a wad of money.

The book will be launched in January 2020 at Arprim's Magasin, followed by a micro-exhibition/residency. This will be an opportunity to explore ways to disseminate art at the fringes of the market economy. This way, I imagine ways to build a social network where art and trade would be ways to take care of each other. The public will be invited to meet me at the Magasin to discuss those issues in exchange for a copy of my book.

The idea of printing money is an old printmaker's (and anarchist) phantasm, but it is also an excuse to have fun going back to classical portrait drawings, make outdated-looking guilloché patterns using a spirograph, meet people and address issues I've been concerned with for many years.

Having fun making art seems like an evidence but it is not that easy. There is an enormous pressure in the art world to make work that is consistent and coherent within your art practice, with a recognizable signature. The art world has become so institutionalized and submitted to an economical logic that values productivity above everything, to a point that really hinders creativity. When you have a family to support, you don't have time anymore for “non-productive” work like research. It is hard to find that delicate balance between working for an income and finding the freedom you need for creation. I try to keep fun in mind these days.

AJM: Do you have any artist survival tips'? Or advice for printmakers/artists who are just starting out? What do you do to remain inspired?Do you have any observations or advice for navigating the art world life?

EJ: Work in a collective studio. Volunteer in an artist-run center. It shouldn't have to be like that, but you have to work relentlessly. And not get discouraged.

AJM: Where is the best place to find you online?

EJ: I'm a bit anachronistic so ---> emmanuellej.wordpress.com

AJM: Any inspiring websites or resources we should know about?

EJ: These days I follow a Facebook page called Mothers in Arts. I found a lot of interesting reads for my project there. They also have a website ---> mothersinarts

More work by Emmanuelle:


Histoires Croisés, 2017


Confidences montréalaises, 2018


Promenades interstitiales


Lieux commons


Lieux commons Naufrages


La création de l'univers

Once upon a time I had a dream that came to me through a collage I did when I was real tired. Then that dream came true. But hey this is not the first time that this happened. The end.

Erzulie & I

Sometimes Life is perfect.
Here am I on the same page as Erzulie Freda, randomly quoted in an article in Curator: The Museum Journal for interpretive planners on the 2014 Vodou exhibit at Museum of Civilization in Ottawa.
Then discovered by my mums who happens to be such an intrepretive planner.
This particular exhibition was very special for me.
I rented a car and drove from Montreal to see it with Inigo, who was a baby at the time.
Then I wrote a comment in the visitor's book thanking the curators for such a beautiful show.
And then my motehr read my comment on page 34 of the article 2 years later.
Heehee!
Shaping a Richer Visitors' Experience: The IPO Interpretive Approach in a Canadian Museum Authors Jean-François Léger First published: 21 January 2014

Xylon hors normes -

a group show featuring printmakers who explore woodcut printmaking in an out of the ordinary way!! at Galerie d'art Stewart Hall 176, chemin du Bord-du-Lac - Lakeshore Pointe-Claire, h9s 4j7 514 630-1300 poste 1778 Du 3 septembre au 16 octobre 2016 de 12h à 17h Here is my contribution to the Xylon hors normes exhibition. Minstrel pyramid/ Je dérive nue avec les yeux grands ouverts is a sculptural work created from a teetering assemblage of imagined animals. The animals are arranged in a symbolic pyramid arranged from largest on the bottom to smallest on the top. The title is radically different in French and English in reference to the difficulties in translation when crossing cultures and languages. The largest animal, a winged llama rabbit with the paws of a lion, was carved from cedar and pine. The additional ascending animals are created from papier maché with a collage of various papers including a 22 x 30 inch woodcut I created for this exhibition. These beasts are a mashup of fauna selected from imagined and impossible forests in England, Trinidad and Québec.One can never stop being oneself and so I made no effort to court originality in this piece. The work was brazenly inspired by Maurizio Cattelan's 1999 sculpture, Love Lasts Forever, which was in turn inspired by the Brother's Grimm fairytale Town Musicians of Bremen. Photography by Christina Lovegrove Thomson

Printmaking in Montréal: An interview with Irina Schestakowich

As part of the Gravure Montréal facebook page I will be asking print media artists to provide some insight into their work and explore the impact that printmaking has had on their creative process.

Irina Schestakowich
Irina Schestakowich is a Toronto-based artist and is a member of Open Studio.I first encountered Irina's Doll Works when I was a child visiting artist Sybil Rampen's farm and studio in Oakville. Irina had created the most wondrous series of beautiful dolls. These small dolls seemed to me to be a fascinating collection of opposites. The dolls were sewn collages consisting of soft bits and hard bits. Fragile, vulnerable and strong, contained yet exploding with life, these tiny beings had such a strong sensuous presence they seemed alive. Warm hand painted faces beamed and observed, their apparel, an explosion of asymmetrical details created from fabrics and objects that came rich with the patina of a life filled with stories. Later, much later, I'm not sure when exactly, I discovered that Irina was a printmaker.
AJM: Good morning Irina! Thank you for being so generous with your time and self. Let's begin at the beginning. Who are you as an artist? If this seems vague I mean how do you describe yourself as an artist? Does being an artist mean filling a particular role in society?What are parallel roles? I see on one of your works you described yourself as a maker of Wall Works and Doll Works. What are Wall Works? so intriguing and also perhaps just practical descriptions!
IS: I was always a Print Maker first. I stared creating my Doll Works as a small way to keep being creative when my child was born and I was stuck at home in Victoria, BC.
Wall Works came later. My money maker. I was getting commissions to make walls very print-like to enhance people’s private spaces. This is where I use my know on a large scale. It was still overlays, washes, rubbings, drawing, ~ very much like I do monotypes but on walls. It kept me financially afloat.

Woodcut burn on Washi
AJM: What does your creative process look like? How do things get made?
IS: I always start in books. My daily practice is keeping my art books active. It has nothing to do with being neat. just getting thoughts down. Then if I see a sequence I act upon it. Inspired by my notes I start printing the thoughts. It is usually in a series because I like to work through it. I never know what the final results will be until I do that. Like writing a book when you don’t yet know the ending.
AJM:Do you make deadlines for yourself or work on things constantly?
IS: I work every day, in one form or another.
AJM:When do projects end?
IS: When I have nothing left to say about it.
AJM:Do you make things and never show them to anyone?
IS: Definitely! Lots! Stored for always later.
What should people know about you?
IS: I am very true to myself. I never compromise. It’s almost like ‘for better or worse I will be there’. no matter how tough it is. I NEVER give up.
AJM: Why do you do what you do? What is your motivation to create? What keeps you going? do you have a mission?
IS: My whole thing is basically to focus on other things than our life difficulties. Although I focus a lot on the news, I don’t go there visually. too negative.
I am obsessed with the news but my reaction is to go totally opposite to what I hear. I am the antidote to bad news.
I also think that there are so many other things that we can relate to besides ourselves so my whole attention is to the unknown, the ‘other’. Like: ‘Drink this Irina Potion and you’ll feel better’.
I feel like I’m the Florence Nightingale of the psyche. My prints can contain the antidote to all the never ending violence I see in the world.

Born in the heart of a flower woodcut
AJM: How has printmaking been an important part of your art practice?
IS: My first printmaking lesson was with Suzy Lake who then was just about to leave Montreal and head out for Toronto. I grew up in Montreal and she was so exotic to me from Detroit. The American PrintMaker! From that first encounter I never stopped printing. like an addiction I drink paper and ink. I love the solitude of it. I always think about coming across a print by Hundertwasser called Irinaland. I jumped. I thought, ‘I feel like that!’.
AJM: Like you, I am drawn to the most physically demanding form of printmaking. How is touch important in your work? Does the amount of sweat and energy and repeated actions matter to the success of the work?
IS: Me too. I like the physicalness of it. You refine your actions as time goes by. At a certain point you don’t even think about it. You think you know it but there is so much more about it. That keeps me going.
AJM: Did you have any mentors? Who or what inspires you?
IS: 1. Suzy Lake gave me my first lesson in printmaking in Montreal just before she moved to Toronto. I thought of her as the exotic printmaker from Detroit.
2. Pat Martin Bates from University of Victoria. Not that I learned a lot about printing from her but she taught me about thinking the artist’s way. Reading Rumi, being in touch with the effect of words, the spirit of what being an artist is, awareness, not just the act of making art. From her I also learned the power of making art.
I am passionate about the works of Odilon Redon and Cy Twombly.
Before then as an very young child I spent a lot of time in the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts on Sherbrooke St. and started to do my own research on the what seems to me to be a maze of things. My parents were immigrants focussing on surviving and Art was the last thing on their mind, so I was very much on my own. I had to find my own way and took the opposite route in my own life and stayed true to it regardless of any and all obstacles in my life. And there have been many.
AJM: What is a successful artwork for you?

Dish, a flower - ceramic and drypoint
IS: A piece that feels I just blew it onto the paper. It looks effortless,s without strain. It is less about thinking and more about feeling.
Which creations are your favourite?
IS: Actually there is a small series I did 15 years ago which I have never yet shown, called Flower Language. It is on the thinnest of the Arches paper and that led me to switch to using Japanese paper. Basically I was thinking of China and its quiet acquisitions in the world. I kept thinking they are so poetical that the currencies and transactions would be disguised as flowers. Adding mystery to monetary matters.
It would be great exhibited in a stock exchange somewhere internationally someday. Timely now.
What is your dream project/artistic situation?
IS: Haven’t thought about it.
AJM: Have you noticed any commonalities amongst printmakers?
IS: Yes they are all love their privacy and solitude.
AJM: As I think about your work I feel that your creations are somehow about making the most of everything you have, claiming everything, the power of transformation and imperfection as pathways or for viewers to enter into the works, add their own stories while hinting at your own. Perhaps I think this because I feel that the process of how the work was made is an important aesthetic element. Is there any truth in that? Does the teachings or aesthetic of theatre ever enter into your work? Do you think about the people who see your work or is the work directed by a strong narrative of your own?
IS: I do my art and that’s it.
AJM: You are incredibly prolific and diverse in your art practice. You sew and sculpt, work with murals, fabric, paper, metal and wood. Your works often seem ephemeral and fragile. What do these fragilities add to your work?
IS: Yes, you are right. For the past few years I have been doing a lot of wood cuts but lately I have been trying to work with clay as a way to rewire part of my thinking. I took a little holiday from paper. I’ve been making clay stamps for mark making. (Can’t stay away from printing I see). Somehow I want to merge the paper techniques and clay together. I believe it is always important to keep one’s sense of play and exploration. This leads to new ways. Essential.
I do love fragility. I am intrigued by it. by the whips of things.
Do you mind if your works disappear, are you possessive of them or is it ok for them to decay?
IS: Yes they can disappear like everything in life. I am not obsessed by the permanence of anything. There is no such thing.
AJM: Who are the women in your artworks?
IS: SHE its the essence of all women. I think woman are great. I am about women’s ways. I am not a man and I have no desire to be one nor even to understand their ways.
AJM: I notice many of your work contexts are in the home, or part of creating homes. Is living with the artworks part of completing them?
IS: Actually my environment IS my art. I treat my home as art and yes my art lives easily within that. All my writing is done at home and in that silent retreat my creativity thrives. My initial idea start there.

Bird - woodcut and burn
AJM: What are your current and upcoming projects we should check out/watch out for?
IS: I am having a tiny show of my recent Floral Clay Works, April 6 for a month at Index G at 50 Gladstone, Toronto, ON.
AJM: Surviving as an artist can be tough, with oodles of rejection, working without pay etc. Do you have any 'artist survival tips'? What do you do to remain inspired?Do you have any observations or advice would you like to share to remaining inspired and navigating the art world?
IS: Do whatever you have to do to still remain in the act of making. At times this means ‘scrub a floor’. Try not to think too much about it because there is nothing rational or practical about it. You’d just talk yourself out of it. Forget the rational. Yes it is tough and it takes a lot of courage to hang in. and you always have to fight self doubt like the dragon. Keep on truckin’.
Being an Artist is a special life like no other. See it as a gift and honour that within you. Know it has enduring value.
Thank you Irina! For further information on irina's world please visit her site---> www.irinaprints.com

Printmaking in Montréal: An interview with Printmaker Libby Hague

An interview with Libby Hague, February 2016

As part of the Gravure Montréal facebook page I will be asking print media artists to provide some insight into their work and explore the impact that printmaking has had on their creative process.

To start us off, here is an interview with video and print media artist Libby Hague. Libby is a Toronto-based artist who has close ties to Montréal. She is a member of the printmaking atelier, Open Studio in Toronto. An enthusiastic traveller and incredibly prolific maker, Libby's creations can be found at locations all over the globe, New York, Montréal, Toronto, Tokyo, England, the States to name but a few. I first stumbled across her work while taking a short-cut late one night along Adelaide west in Toronto. In the dark her fragile suspended works flitted and floated in the windows of the wonderfully mysterious Natural Light Gallery.

So without further ado here we go...

Photo credit: Yael Brotman, Class at Hospitalfield

AJM: Hi Libby, thanks so much for agreeing to do this! Let's start with the basics. How do you like to explain yourself as an artist?

LH: I usually say I have a hybrid practice that is based in printmaking. It might be useful to preface anything I say about printmaking with a comment about what I am trying to say in print. I keep returning to an old and unresolvable problem about what it means to be human in a precarious world and how we might become better people. That’s why I have been exploring themes of interconnection and empathy over the past several years.

Photo credit: Walk With Me, Centre Clark, Montreal, 2015

AJM: Whose work or what inspires you ? Who were your founding influences and where do you think you fit in with the timeline of artists. What I mean is whose work do you feel you are following and continuing the same line of inquiry as.

LH: I love to wander through museums, discovering new objects and seeking out others. I recently went to NY in part to see the Picasso sculpture exhibition at the MOMA and an Egyptian Middle Kingdom exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum. Both were great, so I certainly don’t look just at prints. Museums give you a perspective on your own time, you see civilizations rolling along and it is at once splendid, and melancholy. Although I wouldn’t say that I followed or continued their work, when I was a student in the 60’s and 70’s , I was inspired by Rauschenberg and Warhol (not his celebrity prints but the large screen prints on canvas, the Mao, electric chair and Jackie Kennedy series and the combines for example). In the 80’s when I started working at Open Studio, I was excited by the wild assemblage prints of Otis Tamasauskas and the elegant, multi-panel lithos of Don Phillips . I was also tremendously impressed by the work of Harold Klunder who was working with Open Studio printers on highly complex prints that might have had 50 or more layers - the wonderful things that were buried in great prints like Elderslie! I was also impressed by the focus and seriousness that he brought to every mark he made. Later in the 90’s and 10’s, I liked Kiki Smith and Swoon, and more recently Seripop and Ciara Phillips although I only know Ciara Phillips’ work from the internet.

I also love literature and film. I grew up in the suburbs of Montreal and reading added 300 degrees to my world view.

AJM: Why do you do what you do? What is your motivation to create? What keeps you going?

LH: I am a curious person who is both impulsive and patient and when I get an idea, I want to make it happen. When I feel a piece has potential, I get a nervous excitement as if I am a hunter, tracking something I don’t want to lose, closing in on it, feeling its potential. It is something never made before, even if it may be indebted to many things that came before.

As a child I played with blocks . After making something, I would call my mother to come and look and then I would take it apart and start again. Arguably, I still do something similar. I also remember the intense pleasure that came from making things that I thought were good, and like many addictive processes, I have wanted to keep experiencing that satisfaction throughout my life.

Photo credit : Peter Legris Build...build better, Gifts and Occupations Collective at the Zion Schoolhouse with Yael Brotman, Matthew Brower and Penelope Stewart, September 2015

AJM: How do you think printmaking enriched your art practice, what kind of thoughts or actions has printmaking directed you towards?

LH: I love the way printmaking transforms ideas. It integrates the parts and turns up their volume. It’s made me comfortable with layered construction, which creates a comfort level in digital processes like animation and video. I have turned to print installations in recent years as complex envelopes for everything that matters to me at a given moment. This means woodcut, but also sculpture, and recently video or projected animation. This week I am once again using wood type so I can “quote” my thoughts and the texts that inspire me. It allows artists to get as specific as writers.

AJM: What do you consider the pros and cons in printmaking?

LH: The main disadvantage is the toxicity in a lot of the processes. As I get older, I don’t want to breathe the chemicals or wear a respirator. While print often entails a physical strain from repetitive work, I used to enjoy the physical demands of litho because it involved me completely - intellectually, emotionally and physically. In future, I would like to seek out an opportunity to work with a really copacetic master printer. I haven’t explored that very often but meanwhile I am happily printing my own woodcuts.

May I add, a final disadvantage of printmaking is that I am really tired of being dirty. Oh well.

Among prints’ advantages are the way that it involves a lot of busy work. This may not seem like a good thing, but much of this is preparation work which keeps you moving but allows the mind to wander. Both these things can put you in a receptive, associative state of mind. I keep a notebook where I jot down the free-associated ideas so the preparation is syncretic and over time it gets deeper. Sometimes people suggest I hire an assistant but I think, Why? Why pay someone to have my fun?

In print you have components to push around in an improvisatory way and ideas come to you that you wouldn’t encounter if you were sitting in front of a computer thinking your way to a solution. In print, we are making things with our hands and the hands have their own, intelligence.

Finally, I’ll say a word in support of the proofing process which is as much a part of printmaking as its multiplicity. Proofing encourages experimentation, learning ( you compare variations) and a search for perfection because you keep trying until you are satisfied. When you are at that point, the process holds the energy and passion of that moment in the marks.

Studio shot of work in preparation for Harbourfront (left) and Vienna (right)

AJM: Do you think there are common traits amongst printmakers and how they are in the world?

LH: Like any specialty, there are lots of technical matters to be perfected and this can be both quietly inspiring and limiting.

AJM: Are creating through printmaking installations and video related or opposing and complimentary practices? How so?

LH: They are different enough that there is a pleasant collision when they are juxtaposed. They complement each other well because video brings in sound and movement. The time constraints and ambitions of both installation and video require other people’s involvement which brings in other energy and insight which is also a good thing.

Choir of Love, video still, 2014 curated by Mireille Bourgeois of CFAT for AGNS

Libby Hague's One Step at a Time, print installation, Art Gallery of Mississauga, 2009

AJM: Who/what are these figures and patterns that appear in your work? are they symbols or portraits or....

LH: It depends on the context. You may be thinking of the small athletes I used in my disaster series. I thought of them as searching for meaning in their lives by exerting themselves to their utmost to rescue small babies that needed saving. They were depicted in the middle moment when the consequences of their actions were unknown but to me they were heroic , simply by trying their best. The idea was that they desperately needed each other, and the girls represented people I admired who took risks and made a commitment to help others. The disaster installations I did always had this element of rescue. The figures also allow me to bring in a narrative. I think of the installations as laboratories where we give ourselves the time and space to figure out who we are and then, maybe, how can we become better people.

AJM: What are you trying to say and who are speaking to, who do you create work for? What are the conversation themes from people experiencing your work?

LH: My work is often about our responsibilities to each other, our interconnectedness. I also have a terrible sense of the “fragility of goodness” ( a phrase from Martha Nussbaum) and that it takes an active effort to maintain and perhaps improve the things we value, both on a personal and societal level. The idea that seems to have the most traction in my recent work is the idea of hope, I suppose because we are paralyzed without it.

Photo credit:Peter Legris,Family Dynamics, Verso Gallery, Toronto, 2014

AJM: I feel that humour, playfulness and travel are important to your practice. For me, all of these characteristics are a way to embrace risk, chance and accident, to relinquish complete control and facilitate alchemical reactions with their contexts. Would you agree? Would you say this is a way to court and embrace mysteriousness and the risk of miscommunication or is it something else entirely? Does the location of the work matter?

LH: I’d like to comment on your question about risk. Robert Lepage, the theatrical polymath, has had a big influence on me. I still feel the wonder of his 5 hour+ production The Seven Streams of the River Ota, which I saw about 25 years ago. Lepage described it as a work in progress which made me realize that with complicated things, some aspects not only will, but should, go wrong. If not, there isn’t enough discovery happening. You have to try to push ahead and improve the weak part during the course of the show ( oh no it’s that artist moving things around again) or try to nail that part the next time. It’s amazing how this strategy makes you feel relaxed and free. Nervous but relaxed.

You have to work hard to pre-prepare as much as you can before an installation but accept that you can’t control everything. The location matters a lot. Since the space will be different, you will be responding as sensitively as possible to that and the individuals helping you have a big influence .

I often want to make something because I think it will be funny. Humour can also delay the impact of darker ideas, that is to say, to prevent people from rejecting them right away. If something looks like fun , we approach it with a more unguarded heart and in a sense, we are vulnerable and reachable emotionally. The hope is that the complexity will settle in.

Probably my biggest risks are curbing a tendency to get sentimental and preachy.

AJM: How do you think your work has changed over the years?

LH: I feel freer and I trust my hunches more. I often pursue an idea without knowing where it will take me. It is a conscious and unconscious process. I correct my course many times, trying to put down layer upon layer in the work and to make it deeper and more complex. Even after the show is up it’s a luxury to spend time with it and try to understand it more fully. First I am trying to satisfy myself.

The big change in my work happened when I left part time teaching and started developing a print based installation practice. This was something new. I had the good fortune to switch to Japanese paper which encouraged me to jettison many of the rules of printmaking that I had followed until then. I started pinning the paper to the wall, cut up the sheets, pleated the prints and left the press and picked up a wooden spoon. This paradoxically encouraged me to go bigger because I didn’t have the limitation of the press bed to consider . I stopped editioning. I still printed a large number of sheets from each matrix but I printed only when I needed more of something; otherwise the blocks remained stacked against the wall. It was a different way of managing my time and money, i.e., less time printing and investing in paper and more time coming up with new ideas.

Inventing Hope, Idea Exchange, Cambridge, curated by Iga Janik, 2015/16

AJM: What are your current and upcoming projects we should check out/watch out for? LH: I just installed a sculpture with an animation projection for the Tricky Women International Festival in Vienna and now I’m preparing for an installation at Harbourfront in Toronto in June. I’m excited about both of them.

AJM: Surviving as an artist can be tough, with oodles of rejection, working without pay etc. Do you have any 'artist survival tips'? What do you do to remain inspired?Do you have any observations or advice would you like to share to remaining inspired and navigating the art world?

LH: Try not to be defeated by rejection. The IPCNY has stories about artists who have applied more than a dozen times before being finally accepted.

It’s always good to have another project on the go. When a show is over, which for me also means dismantled into component pieces, it can be depressing unless something else is in the works.

It’s also good to recognize that sometimes you need to take a break, get distance and learn something new, go to exhibitions, concerts and films, spend time with people, go for a drive in the country.

Thank you Libby! For further information on Libby's world please visit her site---> www.libbyhague.com