On Arts and crafts
Three craftspeople, keepers of time-honoured crafts
Anne-Marie Hamel
Weaver
“If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.”: Anne Marie Hamel, in coaxing the traditional knowledge from herself and putting her hand to it, has been the very embodiment of this expression since her arrival in Charlevoix as part of the back-to-the-land movement in the 1970s. At that point, she spent more than 500 hours practising, teaching herself the craft of low-warp weaving, at the Centre d’art de Baie-Saint-Paul.
She’s learned it so well that, today, she is one of the artists who keep alive the tradition of Charlevoix techniques, such as boutonné de Charlevoix, a method of weaving wherein the thread (looking button-like) is pulled from the weft at various points to create a design. A typical pattern: the Charlevoix eight-pointed star that adorns the flawless pillows that Anne-Marie sells at her public market table all summer long. Alongside these, one can also find light scarves made of coloured natural fibre, dish towels, and catalogne, the comfort and the character of which are both nostalgic.
With patience and a perfectionistic streak, Anne-Marie wove table cloths and cushions for the Le Germain Charlevoix hotel over the course of 700 hours, and participated in the creation of a textile mural in the Club Med Charlevoix entrance hall. Above all, she is actively passing her knowledge on, so that these crafts will never be forgotten.
Daniel Savard
Sculptor and artistic ironsmith
Feeding the fires of creativity and the fires of the forge; keeping the burning fires of yesteryear’s skills lit… The smithy who performed the work of daily life also had all of the skills needed to work metal that, from the dawn of civilization to the present, makes the creation of treasures that kindle envy, and symbolize power, possible. Passing down his knowledge, Daniel is driven by the desire to keep that knowledge alive; this man who, formerly, fed the forge at Forge Menuiserie Cauchon in La Malbaie and who, nowadays, teaches familiarization courses and leads creative workshops with Chloé and Louis at the LaTerrière studios, in among Saint-Urbain’s backcountry mountains.
Using his imagination (and raw metal), Daniel gives birth to creatures that most often meld the human figure with plant roots, stretching out in movements that suggest life. Visions in which nature and science fiction go hand in hand, intertwine and express freedom, vital forces, dreams… And, in other cases, celebrations, where characters wearing headcoverings and attire almost suggestive of the circus wield their violins and their instruments, among further visions along the creative path of an artist who wields fire!
Jean-Pierre Léger
Stained glass artist
Plays of light and translucence… Jean-Pierre Léger digs through his sample boxes like a child digs through his treasure boxes, rubs a bit of textured glass with his thumb, looks through it, warms a burst of sunshine using a plate of amber glass… It’s that genuine love of the material, and of light itself, that drives a great deal of Jean-Pierre’s creativity. It is this, and Charlevoix itself, his adopted home, a place that led him to incorporate its landscape into some of his more recent works, his recent series inspired by the river and its banks to name one. The figurative elements in this work are created using a grisaille silkscreen process, a technique of “painting” with glass powder traditionally used to outline faces in the stained glass found in old churches. And it’s that stained glass that kindled Jean-Pierre’s interest in this increasingly forgotten craft when he visited the cathedrals of Europe as a young man. He then trained with a Montreal stained glass artist, learning his trade and working on a number of projects in the city, both restorations and creative works, for public and private clients. For about a dozen years now, he has unleashed his imagination by creating original, contemporary compositions, signing his name to them as Ô Vitrô: the name of his studio and shop in Les Éboulements.
