Tea Passages

As I travelled through Europe and the USA for work and pleasure, I missed my studio.  But in every breakfast room I found paper!

The paper of tea bags is technically robust, thin and consistent in size, yet the incredible palette of tints and patterns produced by the many infusions and storage conditions preserved the intimate moments and experiences shared over a cup of tea..  With the spent  tea bags I could create a modular work, light, flexible and resistant, that adapts to constraints of transport and installation, that vibrates with the light and air in its environment.

So every stop in a temporary workshop or at home invited me, and still invites me to this day, to the following actions: Empty the used sachets of their contents, gently wash them, one by one, squeeze them, let them dry, score them with permanent ink by following a measured template, assemble them with homemade acid-free glue in three rows of nine papers to create sheets of 27 bags. Sew them together on both faces, by two threads of beige and black colors.

Each exhibition is a unique deployment, and can be composed of from hundreds to thousands of papers.

Available for rental or direct sale

Depuis 2011

Généralement, le quadrillage, utile à la lecture d’un territoire, donne la liberté de visiter les parties qu’il découpe. Celles-ci se trouvent donc séparées pour être mieux reliées puisque la connaissance approfondie du tout résulte de la connaissance cumulée de ses parcelles.

​

Le quadrillage, ici, est blanc, de toutes couleurs mêlées, « est fait » de cette lumière par laquelle nous appréhendons le monde visible. Dans le blanc des Sillons lumineux, les parcours rehaussés d’une teinte irisée ou pailletés sont surfils conducteurs de vies traversant l’espace et le temps. Ils dessinent des zones qualitatives et signalent les réseaux précieux qu’ils tissent, dans ce grand tout re-présenté lui-même très partiellement : d’où une série des Sillons lumineux.

En pratique, après une composition - à l’aide de colle à PH neutre - de papiers préalablement peints à l’encre ou à l’huile repigmentée, je grave les sillons de telle manière que le blanc duveteux du support initial - papier bien entendu - ressurgisse. Apparaissent avec, les traces du labeur et des prises de risques. Ces lignes sont en effet plus ou moins ténues jusqu’à parsemées de petits trous. Je précise que malgré une fragilité apparente, chaque réalisation est pérenne via mes choix de médiums et protection anti UV.

​

Le blanc finalise la composition alors qu’il est premier, et son surlignage donne du sens car, au-delà de la fonction du cadastre, le quadrillage des Sillons lumineux témoigne qu’une lecture de ce qui nous entoure n’est possible que par ce qui sou tend notre propre histoire et conditionne notre regard.

Le tout, pour chacun d'entre nous, serait donc un enchaînement de territoires bien précis et subjectif, formant néanmoins avec d’autres motifs un ensemble joignant et créant ce grand tout qui nous est, malgré son incommensurabilité, relativement familier.

​

Pour voir l'ensemble de la série veuillez me contacter

Universe Gardens (Since 2007)

​

During the time I worked as an art therapist I learned to organize my work environment to allow me to receive patients while continuing to pursue my artistic research.    Depending on the needs of each patient, setting up and arranging things appropriately was a constant preoccupation.  None of my artwork or that of other patients should be visible when a new patient arrived.  To this end I had set up two adjoining stores in the workshop; one for to hold art-therapy tools and materials, and work done by my patients, and a separate one for my ongoing art projects. The fundamental aim was to disassociate my two parallel activities: art and art therapy. 

During the winter of 2007, experiences with my patients coupled with my own questioning of how I existed in my studio compelled me to revisit this framework and my very mode of existence in this space.   A particular encounter with an autistic patient drove me to challenge my position.   He asked me to adjust my physical posture and movements: I had to support him without any pressure (avoiding sideways glances, loud noises, sudden movements, etc.) while responding to his questioning, "if I  do something here, who are you to do nothing next to me?”

As a result, on a table alongside his, I took a black A4 sheet, as he worked with a white sheet four times as large. We both were facing the windows opening to the street.  My patient started to hatch areas of his drawing, a process he pursued from week to week.  I used a tool that allowed me to operate in a discreet and methodical way; I started my first cuts with the scalpel. I spontaneously opened tiny windows in the dark sheet. I uncovered plots by following perspectives with random orientations. When my first paper frame was almost finished, my patient exclaimed:

"How did you know that there were all those squares on your sheet? "

I answered that I did not know it and that I would continue to discover others perhaps ...

Understand that this experience is not usual in art-therapy, and is part of a more extensive methodology that I won’t go into here.  What I want to convey with this anecdote is that some creations are imposed on me as bridges or gateways for unanticipated reasons. 

The resulting work is an approach that grew beyond its initial inspiration. It grew as it is articulated within itself and with its environment: the series of my carvings is ritually pursued freehand on black paper in a solitary exercise of concentration.  It also reveals itself through video projection; the interplay with architecture and sometimes my other works in the scenography of my shows gives a unique function to each of my kirigami or cutarts,  and conveys a coherence across scales, hence: "Universe Gardens".
 

.Pour voir l'ensemble de la série veuillez me contacter

The Abyss as a Window (Since 2007)

• Paper has always appeared to me as a living thing, familiar and profound, and it remains the essential element of my work on canvas.  In childhood, I drafted shades of black and gray with pencil, and spread the colors of dry pastels on downy Canson paper.  When I reached adulthood, I witnessed the fusion of ink and the fibers of the Washi under the touch of my hand. Paper seeped deeply into my identity.   The formation of an artwork was not an initiative, instead I had to see the reflection of some part of me in the material before I began.  Through paper, I discovered that creation of art is vital to the recognition of myself.  Paper has guided me in my search for my position in this unconceivable world, and has helped me gain a foothold, understanding who I am.  

• I started creating paper when I returned from Japan to my home region of Brittany, France to work on my roots both figuratively, and literally as I created paper from plants that I grew in my garden.  These new materials, complementing the Japanese translucide papers, gave substance to my work.  There was a time during which the paper would not disunite from the primary tool of the sieve which I used to make the paper; the sieve remained the fundamental structure of my work.  The wooden frame now has replaced the original mould; creating a limit to the paper and an interface with its environment.

• After about twenty years working solely with paper, I finally brought myself to confront the canvas. First, I pierced it to search for the shadow of the paper.  Then I adopted the canvas as the stable foundation which plays with and reflects light through the marbled paper that I place upon it.   The marbled paper is created in oil or permanent ink using traditional methods.  The loss  of the original paper-making sieve led me to weave a grid above the paper and canvas.  The net invites the eye to go through this weft, because this is indeed the purpose, the purpose of going beyond, of refining our understanding of the world and considering that our eyes can still observe the imperceptible, giving us the measure of what we don’t quite see but that which we crave to discover.

• The foreground, a winding grid of black lines creates an illusion of  variable and immeasurable windowing.   It fragments and binds everything together. Its lines weave and create a texture  with the lines of japanese ink. The universe encompases the infinitely large and infinately small.  My vision as an artist is to frame the unknown on a human scale.  The frame, the stripped black wood, and the fabrics on the painting create a safety net that allow us to explore that reality; we can travel safely along the threads of the net and enter the pictorial adventure of the different spaces in the painting.

• This series, called “The Abyss as a Window” started in 2007.  It allies traditional techniques, stemming from my training with masters of each discipline with my continual experimental practice; making of paper, calligraphy, textile design, monotype, paper marbled with oil and ink.  This combination has expanded my field of investigation and my liberty.  

• Conscious of the fragility of existence, I attempt through my art to create a bridge connecting tradition with a personal vision of universality.  For me, through my continuing work with paper, a connection with the human family enables a more serene apprehension of cosmos and death.  In “The Abyss as a Window”, I try to frame the emptiness of the black matter on a human scale, in an attempt to create a constant organised landscape as from a selective, defective memory.  Things stop, change and restart infinitely.  

​

​

To view the entire series please contact the artist.

(1997-2003)

​

Rentrer du Japon s’est apparenté à revisiter mes origines. Pour vivre à nouveau en France, il m’a fallu littéralement travailler sur mes racines : Planter dans mon sol breton pour en extraire ma propre matière papier. Un papier comme un agglomérat. Pour ce faire, j’en ai fabriqué les outils, notamment les tamis nécessaires à sa mise en feuille.

Au bout de quelques années, la série « Tamis » se constitua d’œuvres au cadre servant d’ossature et en résonance avec l’environnement, le sujet-même, de la survenue du contenu papier. Les trous du papier ouvraient quant à eux sur le maillage primordial, la trame de fond. Le voyage dans la conjugaison des espaces et des temps se poursuivait. La mémoire « en corps » !

​

Les Tamis ont été notamment exposés au Château de la Briantais, La galerie Visio Dell Arte (Paris 8éme), Art Apart’ #2

Pour voir l'ensemble de la série veuillez me contacter

Depuis 1993

​

En remontant au début de mon parcours artistique, je m’aperçois que j’ai toujours vécu « entre ». Entre deux cultures, deux apprentissages, par exemple, avec le papier comme seul véhicule et valeur unique. C’est donc naturellement que je me suis retrouvée à Tokyo avec mon portefeuille sous le bras, c’est-à-dire avec ma collection de créations sur papier destinées au textile d’ameublement. J’avais appris et travaillé en France, auprès d’un designer allemand spécialisé Jacquard, le dessin et la mise en couleur reproductibles par les machines d’impression et de tissage.

Le washi, papier japonais aux qualités proches du tissu, me servait de support idéal pour réaliser des maquettes similaires aux résultats escomptés par les industriels. L’utilisation des encres superposées ou isolées à l’aide de cire répondait avec exactitude au procédé croisant les fils pour obtenir les teintes. J’ai vendu des maquettes afin de poursuivre, nourrir, mon travail personnel recourant lui aussi à ces techniques, libéré toutefois de la performance du dessin, sur grands formats.

La société de textile Tori fut mon premier mécène en exposant « Sillonner » au Tokyo Design Center. Sillonner se compose de cinq panneaux, chacun mesurant trois mètres de haut sur un mètre de large. Suspendus et coulissants ils se présentaient à l’entrée du showroom. Entrer se conjuguait à traverser l’espace pictural.

La manière que j’avais adoptée de fondre la cire dans le papier, révélant chatoiement et translucidité, connut également le soutient de Maîtres verriers et calligraphes, le concours d’artistes et d’architectes d’intérieur jouant de la lumière.

​

« Sillonner » comme d’autres grands formats de cette nature, est une œuvre que je vous propose à la location ou la vente directe.

​

Pour voir l'ensemble de la série veuillez me contacter