Zulu Hut Why They Are Built That Way

A journey and a style atypical
December 2003

by Denise Pelletier

(DP) - The painter Thérèse Fortin returned to live in his hometown after several years in Quebec. Just before leaving Quebec, she has completed a project of exceptional scale, an enormous triptych painted with the participation of 1500 people, mark the fifth anniversary of the Commission scolaire de la Capitale.
This was done last August, under a huge tent, eight people have helped Therese Fortin blends of colors and spatulas on tables and distribute them to members, officers and employees of the school board to they can put spots on the large canvas, 15 feet by six feet at their disposal.
Therese Fortin then worked for six days to identify, among these spots, patterns, themes, characters. From her observations, she reworked the canvas in order to identify three topics: a saxophonist, a student in carpentry and a soccer player, themes that illustrate well the diversity of student activities. She then removed her canvas into three separate tables, and the triptych is now on display at the registered office of the school board of the Capital.

Therese Fortin became a specialist in the creation of collective works by the same method. She conducted a Chicoutimi a year ago and a half, with a group of women invited by AFEAS Our Lady of Grace, and another at the Chateau Frontenac with 400 participants. In its creation
personal, it shall follow the same technique she called emergy, which is to paint spots first spontaneously, then in its subsequent emergence of a figurative subject, adding features, highlighting some forms and reducing others. She works with oil and spoon in shades of yellow, orange, red, brown, projecting drops of color on certain sections of the canvas to create a motion effect.
Therese Fortin continues to produce in the studio located just in front of the house she now lives in River Eternity. After a career in the communications field, she returned to painting, an art she loves since childhood, there fifteen years and devoted himself full time.

U.S.
Curiously, the United States, more than in Quebec, his works found buyers. In particular, the Joy Gallery Key West, Florida, who has represented his participation in 1997, Art Festival of the place. Therese Fortin had his best year in 2001, selling more than forty paintings. Among others, one of his works, entitled "Champagne" where one sees a young woman sitting near a table on which is placed a glass of champagne ("my best canvas," says the artist) has been bought by a New York lawyer to (it is among others the Counsel for the Metropolitan Opera) who installed it in his office. Subsequently, the latter, who did not know her, sent her an email asking "where one could find in New York" and learning that she was not there, told him that it absolutely had to visit the Big Apple.
Besides, she will, and will travel to Chicago and New York to meet with collectors and potential agents, after which she will return to Key West for the opening of a new exhibition in March 2004. It will also exhibit at the Galerie Horizon Sorel Tracy, from February 8 to 28, an offer which was received by Internet.
However, a consequence of the attacks of September 11, 2001 in New York, the art market has become very difficult: Americans and tourists from abroad have virtually stopped traveling, and suddenly Key West does was more a desired destination, "says Therese Fortin, who has suffered for two years from the effects of this situation, which slowly begins to recover. In Quebec, she sells quite a few paintings, "My art is unusual, it may be too out of the box," she says.

Breasts Blood Vessels

Adrienne Therese Fortin Luce

The symbolism of wolves
December 2003 (performance)

by Denise Pelletier
(DP) - Among the performances included in the conference program geopoetic, art and memory of the land , that of Adrienne Luce, particularly fascinating, is a fine example of design by Kenneth White in the convergence between the earth, nature and man. The artist, born in Gaspe and installed Chicoutimi where she is pursuing a master's degree in art UQAC, worked on the interaction between humans and animals. Her performance began inside the gallery, a video projection. The artist then imitated the howl of the wolf, which met his little dog named Chip. Then she walked outside, near the Arts Building, where the waiting Rebel, the wolf holding a leash and closely supervised by his master, Yves Huot.
The artist then buried under snow bread topped with sardines (the favorite food of Rebel): the wolf, free from obstacles and attracted by the smell, having approached her, Adrienne Luce ate slices of bread along with the animal. Then it spread the floor and placed his hands on his chest and forehead, pieces of red meat that the wolf was carefully picked with its mouth to devour them.
This performance is part of a wolf research that leads Adrienne Luce past few years. The act of burying food, as does the alpha female of the pack to teach little ones to find, takes symbolic value: that of mother-child relationship through the food, the the table as a gathering place. The captivity in which he is held Rebel reminds one that retains the workers at the plant. Finally she sees in her performance, she must show great humility before the wolf, a gesture of repair the rift between man and beast, born of prejudice that have occurred over the centuries on the Wolf, considered a dangerous predator, inherently evil. Adrienne
Luce said he developed a strong attachment to the Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean, which allows him to develop his practice in situ on art and nature, and pursue reflection on the coast which is the subject of his thesis.