artist’s book
Stitched folded sheets forming two accordions bound back to back, high-quality pigment inkjet printed images and brief narrative text in French on Rives BFK and Kizuki Kozo paper, 13 x 16.1 x 1.8 cm (closed).
In French, the words “mère” and “mer” not only sound the same, they are both feminine. This artist’s book is a continuation of the project De mère en mer (From Mother to Sea). Composed of two accordion folded parts bound back-to-back, one part of the book contains photographic montages of the St. Lawrence River, the other of Northeastern Ontario lakes, and both include reproductions of drawings from the De mère en mer series. On the last page of each section is a narrative text where the sentences of one section have been rearranged in reverse order to create the text of the other, creating a cycle and evoking a sense of déjà vu. The intimate story, told in French in the first person singular, is about journeys, impressions, memories, the loss of a mother and those before her, related to bodies of water.
The original copy made in 2018 was presented in the Canadian Bookbinders and Book Artists Guild’s juried quinquennial travelling exhibition Art of the Book 2018: Audain Gallery, University of Victoria, August 11–26, 2018; University of the Fraser Valley Library, Abbotsford, September 10–December 7, 2018; Fine Arts Building Gallery, University of Alberta, Edmonton, January 22–February 16, 2019; Creation Cube, George Bothwell Branch, Regina Public Library, May 18–July 21, 2019; Centre culturel franco-manitobain, Winnipeg, August 22–October 3, 2019; McGill University Library, Montréal, November 13, 2019–February 14, 2020; Craft Ontario, Toronto, March 5–15 and June 1–July 15, 2020; Andrew & Laura McCain Art Gallery, Florenceville-Bristol, October 17–November 14, 2020. Annulations en raison de la pandémie (2020): Craft Ontario, Toronto, March 16–May 31; Harriet Irving Library, University of New Brunswick, Fredericton; Mary E. Black Gallery, Nova Scotia Centre for Craft and Design, Halifax; Craft Council of Newfoundland and Labrador, St. John’s. Featured in the news report, The Art of the Book 2018 exhibition at UVic, on CHEK TV, Victoria, BC, 11 August 2018.
A special edition of 4 copies was created in 2022.
Acquired by Bibliothèque et archives nationale du Québec in 2022.