Hi.

I'm Eric Ford for Made here.

Montreal based filmmaker Maxime- Claude L' Écuyer profiles a prolific artist studio space in his film 305 Bellechasse.

The film offers a unique chance to hear from each artist about their process and work.

As we see the studio spaces they occupy located in a historic converted Montreal pasta factory, you can watch 305 Bellechasse and other great Made here films streaming on VermontPublic.org and through the PBS app.

Enjoy the film and thanks for watching.

My name is Janet Warner, my studio is number 309.

Im from Winnepeg and Ive been in Montreal 17 years.

This is the only studio Ive had in Montreal.

I love the feel of this building Its very warm and even though its industrial, it feels more intimate that that.

It has old wood floors and high ceilings.

10 feet, could use a higher ceiling but its good.

I like that its 4 stories high.

It feels like home to me.

Ive been here so long.

I like the light for my studio because its indirect.

So I never have the problem of light breaking in on the walls.

And I never have to block the wondows to keep the light out.

Also, Im elevated here so I have a bit of a view.

So thats kind of nice too.

I grew up in Winnepeg but I taught in Sascatchuan for 12 years before I moved to Montreal.

I had a studio there as well and it's actually almost the same distance from my home, which is a five minute car ride.

a 15 minute walk and its very simlar to the set up I had there in terms of where home was and where a studio is.

I love being able to walk to the studio.

I am a painter and painters have to work in a very consistent way.

It's not concentrated on a project based way It's more of an everyday practice so I can be here maybe five days a week, when Im teaching is usually like three or four.

I try to take a day off every now and then just to refresh and recharge But I work 4 to 6 hours a day in the studio.

that's enough for me to have that sense of consistency.

It used to be that I could come in if I was preparing for a show or feeling a lot of pressure I can come in and start working right away.

But it's not that.

It's not as often that way anymore.

Usually I come in and take time to think about what Im going to do.

my favorite is to get to the studio and I get some coffee.

And so I sit, have coffee and think about what to do and I write, take notes Its a pleasurable time to rhuminate on things.

So that's my favorite thing, just being here and thinking, writing, looking having coffee.

and by that time I usually have an idea of what I want to do that day.

Thats an important part of the process.

I have a hard time thinking about my work outside the studio.

being in the space activates the part of me that makes the work.

and I dont usually get ideas outside the studio Everything pretty much happens in this space.

Thats what I experience.

If I try to thik about things outside the studio it doesnt really go anywhere.

Making something, responding to it, looking at it actually, its very studio based.

My name is David Elliot and my studio is 306.

Ive been here for 20 years.

I spent 10 years on the 4th floor.

And I came down here 10 years ago.

Ive had this studio on the third floor.

Well, I mean, I love Silveine.

He's like a brother.

But we work very differently.

He loves disorder.

you know, this place is always a mess.

And I'm a controlled worker and at a certain point in the process, I ended up in this wheelchair, so it became hard just to get around the wheelchair because he had all this * * * * all over the place so when is space became available I said, I got to go and he understood and so I came down here and set up here.

Just really briefly, I mean, Ill have to get into health issues to explain this.

I had polio when I was a kid, so I walked with crutches and had these braces but I could make these big paintings Ive made large paintings since the early 1980s.

And I would climb on scaffolding or get up ladders and stuff like that.

So I was made these big things on my own.

What's happened in recent years is that my my arms were also affected by polio and they became and weaker and weaker.

And so it's led.

Me to the point where I can't make the paintings anymore, without pain and I dont have the strength to do it.

So in recent years, I guess the last three years.

I've been working on the collage maquettes that I made for my painting.

So for roughly three years I maintained a spot here and I still have the lease and still my studio.

I'm not really here I have a little corner, a desk where I keep my files and things like that.

So yeah, so that's the story of me and studio.

Its kind of I don't want to relinquish it, I don't want to let it go, but I'm not using it actively, the way I used to.

Eliza Griffith, my studio is 407 in the Bellechasse building.

I was trying to think of when I got the studio there, 2010.

A friend of mine, David Elliot who has a studio here He's also a collegue because I teach painting at Concordia invited me, when I moved to Montreal, to see his studio and and I fell in love with the building, very attracted to it.

Stusios are even more critcal than appartments sometimes.

It sounds weird, but its hard find a good studio and it depends on what your needs are.

Theres this whole studio romance thing, This building is quite beautiful.

its not remarkable architecturally on the outside but its lovely wood floors, its nice combination of cared for and grubby, the way a studio should be.

When I was younger, my studios looked like you could die very easily, like some piece of wall would fall on you.

Its a very big space to have by myself, sometimes I feel decedant but I have this job which doesnt give me enough time to paint as much as I want, but it allows me to afford the space I'm trying to make it feel condusive to working because I am very sensitive to that, I cant just draw and paint anywhere.

I can't focus.

Ive created this environment of focus I can focus in.

And I also have huge material space needs.

I like to work very big and I work on multiple pieces at once.

So i like to have them all visible because they are all in in relationship to eachother and often they are all partly finished, in different phases and one idea will lead to another.

So, its like chapters in a novel, maybe or songs in an album.

I would love to be the regular person but Im not.

Im the cycler.

I always thought that was illegidimate as a painter because theres a lot of things about the daily practice but when things are complicated, I come in everyday and when I have a show, I come in everyday.

I power up for exhibitions and for completing bodies of work because otherwise I like to Rhuminate a lot.

I just paint and I drift and draw and write I never am able to work in the mornings so I do practical stuff and I usually get to the studio around one I still dont actually put brush to canvas or I dont do focused work until 4.

So, when Im writing I am kind of dancing around it.

Trying to get ready to focus because I know when I try to start when I am not focused, I just cant do it.

So I have these fantasies about arriving at 8 and painting but honestly it still corresponds with states of conscienceness for me.

So as nightime draws near, I get better.

it's something to do with the nocturnal rhythm.

I tend to start painting around 4 then I can get locked in.

and then around six, its going really well and then sometimes by 2 its like fantastic.

Which its very practical for a normal life.

I work on a bunch, several and you know, I take them as far as I can and if I can't figure out how to resolve them, I let it sit.

I just look at it for however long it takes.

I probably have four or five things going usually.

and then if I sold it, great.

sometimes I don't and it can sit there for a year or more.

I think of it as advancing the troops.

If I can advance them, they go together.

I do a few moves one, a few moves on the other, so, its like a game.

When Ive reached a certain point, theres only a few things I can do to see if it's going forward.

And then I just let it sit.

Theres some that are in the beginning, some that are almost finished and middles, its all hard though startings, middles and ends, its all hard.

Sometimes I think starting is easy, then starting is so hard, to get up the gumption nerve to start something.

You know, the middle is really hard because you don't know how to get to the end.

And the end is super hard.

because you can't really resolve anything.

Theyre always, you know, 90% or as far as I could figure out how to take it.

And then I have to leave it.

The funny thing is that it's dead to me at that point.

So it was like Im just like, ok, goodbye.

I'm not interested in it anymore once it's finished, its dead.

Its always hard to finish things, there's always something that youre not sure about.

I work with collages, theyre section by section I usually have three paintings going on at the same time because theres different drying times and I mask things out.

Usually, when i settle on a collage, Ill photograph it or scan it.

and rather than griding and transferring that way, I usually project it and then Ill rough the thing it with charcoal or something, just so I get a sense of how it's going to look on the big scale.

Then I'll start the process of masking out and then like, for this one Id say, ok today Im gong to do the skulls Im going to rough in the 4 skulls and then I might get it done, halfway done or I'll finish it the next day.

or whatever.

Then Ill do the curtain and behind.

So it's really systematic, even if It's like, if it doesnt work, then I redo it or rethink it But in general, if everything's falling into place, and I dont have to reimagine it it is very systematic Almost like printmaking where its like step 1, step 2, step 3 I am quite methodical and do it section by section until its done or mostly done and then I I might adjust some color or put a glaze on something to change the coloring on it or something like that.

or add something that wasn't in the.

Original collage Im not an organic painter.

I mean, I admire people who are.

someone like Decooning or even someone like Janet who's working on her portaits and then starts to shift them and a skinny face becomes fat and a big nose becomes a little nose, I mean Im not that kind of painter.

Im more, theres a tradition For the way I work.

Someone like Magritte a very systematic painter or James Rosenquist, who.

Was a billboard painter before He was a fine art painter.

More recently, Jeff Combs, who has armies of people working on his stuff.

So systematic is kind of like, yeah, I know its not a very romantic vision of a painter But that's the way it works for me.

For me, the figure, a human representation is in all the work that is meaningful to do.

It's like a bit like writing a novel on their characters so they embodied actors or something.

So I have to find their body positions and the interrelationship in this space, more or less.

I dont need to know the space just the body positions visually, like a tree.

You paint a tree and it has branches and it can be knarley but has interesting shape for my imagination to make it dynamic Its like theater.

So I have the two main actors, it could be simple or it could be props.

I think of the background as props, theyre not real spaces and the characters are actors but it doesnt matter who they are as long as they embody the right thing.

but I dont know what it is that I want from them.

So Ill start thinking about conceptual.

and thematic interests that I am looking at in the moment.

It's intuitive because its a collection of all the things Im thinking about and my life experiences.

Then getting channeled into this call and response way of working They all tend to look like the characters from a B movie.

actors who look a bit like my family Ive tried to make different, people and I dont relate.

Theyre like real people And I don't want them to be real because I need to be able to put bruises on them, put them in unpleasant situations Its got to be like fiction so I dont feel too much responsibility.

So if theyre real people theres no way i can do that.

Like, theres some directors who use the same actors all the time.

The actors always play something different but its vey similar, the director becomes obsessed with things.

And I thought, thats really what is happening here.

Its not that I think this is the ideal typer of person at all its just that they came though making these decisions or the way they come out, there is nothing that interferes with the way I can get them to directly... nothing except my skill and imagination.

They get constructed as I paint.

The paint does lead what I do because If Im trying to do something, willing something to happen but its dissapointing, thats the paint not obeying what my brain thinks so I have to come up with a different soltution So youre problem solving into the being of the painting.

So it's kind of like compromise, all the time, right?

But if you dont do that, you always know what youre going get and theres no adventure quite like the risk taking of it Well, I, like music, I'm interested in in 20th century Popular music mostly and I had a big record collection and I have a CD collection.

I dont always listen to music in the studio.

In the early morning I like it quite, especially when theres no one around, I dont usually put anything on.

I tihnk often in studios people use music to camouflage other people's noise.

You put music on to not hear someone elses music.

or to not hear footsteps or you know so you try to just adjust the sound so its covers their music but doesn't like drive them crazy and then the other time I listen to music is like if I do have a deadline and I'm working late hours long hours and late hours just for adrenaline, just like, you know, you need like a cup of coffee or, you know, some kind of like harmless drug you just put on music to kind of just get you over the fatigue.

Yeah.

And get into a zone.

When I listen to music the music I really love, I want my paitings to feel like that.

I think about music when I am painting.

When I am trying to think about painting, I dont think about image I want, I think about what the feel is.

And the effect.

I am more affected by music than by visual art directly.

So I look at painting and it through my intellect as well as my senses but I want it to come on like a piece of music a bit.

I think about musics effects with the image and the painting and the physical presence of it.

I feel everything good depends on a good accident and And I try different things, consciously to make it happen But the best things really come in from left field, you know?

Very accidentally and thats the happiest thing is when I find something thats aleady there and its like, oh my God its perfect but I didnt have to try and construct it so I spent a lot of time playing with odeas but ultimately it seems like the best ideas happen by accident.

and I try to catch it.

So thats the new thing thats happened Ive started putting the sources in and showning that it is a source rather than trying to make it as if its real.

So the fiction, the real and the artifice of it all is its more exposed.

I'm not sure what that does to the emotional quality of the work because its always been about the emotional intensity.

But ultimately, painting has to be like the intellectual and the sensual informing eachother.

When the conceptual and the sensual are coming together some how.

I was never interested in models in magazines.

That was never really the subject.

It was how those images were being recontextualized and altered to complicate that material.

Now, ironically, they do look more like fashion images but theres a frame around so its not the fiction of the fashion Ive always tried to figure out how to get rid of the material, Folding them, hiding them, brutalizing them sometimes now, they just arent there.

I think the work now is much more about the empty space The space where the figure was, maybe.

yeah absence.

I made a lot of things in this building, its been 20 years.

And spent a lot of my life in this building working on stuff, so yeah, you get attached to it, maybe not the physical space, though I do like the size I think it's like a psychic space you know, it's the psychic energy that you spend in a studio.

Like theres the stuff you make the stuff you dont make, that you think of making For every painting you make, theres 10 you didnt make.

But you still thought about them, dreamed about them maybe even started them, you know, roughed them in, abandoned them, so thats a lot of psychic energy that goes into that, so I think it's the poetic space, I guess.

Theres those old country and western songs that are like, if walls could talk, right?

What would they say in any place?

Somebodys bedroom, a hotel room, a studio?

So studios are quite places, not a lot of gossip or probably not even very much sex happening in studios but theres a lot of dreaming and thinking and trying to reassemble the world in imagery, that happens in studios and every artist does it differently So its that kind of energy that I attach to the studio.

Not so much a physical space.

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