A memory – a Moment

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Funny, I don’t write much about the neat things that happened in my life. There have been a couple that I kind of keep under the rug for one reason or another.

I was a student at the Universite de Moncton, 2nd year, a young more or less ignorant kid. Just being realistic. We had a class trip to New York, holy crap that was so cool. Every moment was like a new flavour to discover, there was danger and shelter; always something to keep your adrenaline popping.

We did the museum and gallery thing. Went to one gallery where I got to see actual prints from photographers like Robert Adams and Joel Peter Wilkens, we were just four students getting attention from the curator.

I almost got kicked out of the Museum of Modern Art for sticking my finger in a Jackson Pollock painting… I couldn’t resist. But they didn’t kick me out.

But, the thing that happened on New York that will move me until the day I drop my body is this:

One evening, an envelope is slipped under the door of my room at the YMCA, addressed do me. The note tells me to be at pier 43 the next morning at 10 AM. I did recognise the writing as being that of my photo prof.

The next morning, I get up, get ready and walk to pier 43. This took me through Harlem and other apparently less than desirable places. It felt oddly frightening because there was nothing threatening. I rember the basketball hoops with chains for nets…

I get to pier 43. I see, in a distance, an Italian style checkered cloth waving in the wind. There are three people standing around the table. I walk towards it, it takes for fucking ever. The sky is mostly grey but full of blue sucker holes.

I get there. It is my photo prof, a curator and none other than Robert Frank himself. I almost shit myself, I am just a kid, a rookie what the hell am I doing here with that icon. We exchanged simple small talk, he summers in Mabou Nova Scotia and I come from Dieppe New Brunswick, not that for and not that different. So we had something in common.

Frank spent his every penny on maintaining a building where he had his studio and that also housed homeless people of all kinds. There is something important to learn with that.

Anyway, that was reason 1 of why I decided that all I could be was an Artist.

Pierre LeBlanc

Artist

Écorchures (pour Raymond Roussel)

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I am starting to think in sounds, different thoughts create a myriad of individual oscillations. The overlapping of the oscillations is where the sound emerges.

Fresh off the workstation please listen to Écorchures on Soundcloud.

Écorchure – Skinning

Things are moving in interesting ways. With a couple of medical procedures coming time is uncertain; events can change quickly and suddenly. In a way, that seems to be the way I am approaching my art making. Patiently undergoing considerable pain.

I do not really wish to use this space for talking about me, the person, but rather the entity that makes this work. It both is and is not me, that is the fun part.

An Exquisite walk with Lee Rie

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I walked with Lee Rie, s/he is tall, has a wide step and makes it necessary for me to speed up my rhythm.

To keep up with the pace of the conversation;

Words coming towards me at the speed of high performance automobiles.

Drifting around turns.

Then I think of all the stuff going on in my immediate “so called” life; it is really quite irrelevant when looking at a larger picture. We are really but miniscule evolutionary specks among millions of other evolutionary specks after all.

Grids Part 5 – May 2021 – Corner Brook NL

So with all that said, I feel it awkward to speak of personal states of being in such a media invested space. But I obviously hope that my work does that without relying on language, as language is just a virus. It is an infection that limits imagination.

The première of “An Exquisite Walk With Lee Rie”: