Orise Jacques-Durocher

Orise Jacques-Durocher’s studio contained three separate tables, which laid out the path for our discussion during my visit. The first table looked like a surface used by a geologist or archaeologist. Arranged by shape and colour were small fragments of glaze and ceramic, miniature wicker-like baskets, and woven brown clay that made me think of nests and chocolate. Here, nothing was fully completed or fully abandoned. The failed pieces were ground down, reintegrated into new glazes, or applied to other sculptures in a process that is time consuming and requires several firings.

This attention paid to “little bits,” as Orise calls them, runs through her practice as a whole. Material constraints, space limitations, production costs, and the time needed for fabrication become visible. They are even exaggerated. In an art world in which success is often associated with grand gestures, large works, heavy materials, she sometimes worries that there will be doubt whether her small sculptures can fill an exhibition space. But she has decided to make “little bits” her language. She perches her sculptures on long wooden legs that raise them high and also accentuate their fragility. The knots in the wood and the traces of the process are preserved. What is usually hidden to give the impression of professional mastery becomes material for reflection and creation.

On the second table were gathered production tools: bags of fresh clay, ceramics tools, a rolling pin placed on a beige-fabric table cloth that she washed often to get rid of the dust that the clay constantly produced as it dried. There was a sense of domesticity, a closeness to daily gestures, that returned often in our conversation. Orise spoke of her sculptures as one might speak of a recipe prepared from leftovers in the fridge. When she teaches in community centres, she nurtures this vision. The gesture of a child shaping a dove is not so different from her own.

The third table was for research. A computer, notes on Post-its. A lamp with a wicker shade found during the residency echoed the forms and materials found in her sculptures. On the wall, cut-out paper silhouettes evoked, in turn, a house or a handbag. These hybrid forms return often in her work: houses, bags, nests. They are a reminder that ceramic objects have historically been used as containers.

This idea meshes with Ursula K. Le Guin’s Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction, about which Orise spoke enthusiastically. In her essay, Le Guin proposes to replace the heroic narrative based on conquest with a history attentive to collection and interdependence. Humanity’s first tool was not the hunters’ knife but the gatherers’ basket. It is an image that finds a natural reflection in Orise’s world. Her sculptures often take the shape of objects capable of holding the gestures and stories of the everyday.

At the back of the studio, near the window whose curtains Orise didn’t close during her entire two months at Est-Nord-Est, a pair of binoculars sat on the floor. She used them to observe birds. Beside them were “unresolved” objects, which she brought to the residency without knowing exactly what they would become. A few books were piled up. On top of a pile, Jacques Ferron’s L’amélanchier, in which he casts a critical eye on society through a child’s eyes. Like Ferron’s little girl or Le Guin’s carrier bags of fiction, Orise’s sculptures draw us with their playful, almost naive appearance: small smooth shapes dotted with sparkles evoke the world of play and childhood. Then, discreetly, they open to the material conditions of existence: invisible labour, the way we live in the world, in which cooking, eating, and taking care of those around us become more important than heroes, exploits, or great monuments.