Chloé Beaulac at SAGAMIE, Centre d’art actuel (Alma, Québec)

I am a multidisciplinary artist living and working in Montréal, Québec. My artworks are primarily drawn images or photographed spaces that I manipulate by means of various techniques such as screen-printing, pyroengraving and mixed techniques so to outline and build a portrait of the places I explore and the experiences I want to share.

In the summer of 2013, I was looking for a remote area where I could focus solely on a new body of autobiographic works that I wanted to produce primarily by digital printing. I found out about Sagamie because of their reputation for being a center for research, creation and production of contemporary digital images produced by visual artists. I contacted Sagamie, with a project in which I proposed to describe visually our role in nature in the manner of an explorer, where I travel a territory letting it infuse me with its history, myths, and personalities.

In residency, a professional technician accompanied me for the duration of 1 week. In this time I sorted through over 10 000 images of various places I had explored in and around the province of Québec. I proceeded to eliminating and categorizing the images by series and by sorting the images of places, events and people I met and had shared experiences with. In each series, I had selected a little under 40 images that we printed out in small versions to aid me in building a visual map from which I could work, sort, analyse and take a step back from the computer screen. This allowed me to decide on which images I should keep for each body of work and to visualize the totality of the work I wanted to produce. Once I decided on each series, I proceeded to work with the technician to manipulate each image so to create a global ambiance and to add, remove and highlight visual information relevant to the idea. We worked together to decide on the sizes of the works, the paper format, the quality of the image, and the how the work would look globally.

All I can say is that this experience is one that I highly recommend and that Sagamie is definitely a residency that artists should apply for if they are looking to work with digitally printed matter. The location is remote, the people are incredibly nice and helpful, the place where I stayed was perfect and cozy, the hospitality was out of this world incredible and I would go back in a heartbeat.

Here is where you can see some of the work done in residency at Sagamie:

http://www.chloebeaulac.com/destination-nulle-part/

Sagamie: Chloe Beaulac, artist in residence

http://centresagamie.blogspot.ca/2014/02/chloe-beaulac.html

Sagamie

http://centresagamie.blogspot.ca/

Concordia University article : Artists in residence push their practice

http://www.concordia.ca/alumni-friends/news/cunews/offices/vpdersg/aar/2014/02/24/artists-in-residencepushtheirpractice.html