public art

Being devoted in bringing art closer to people, anchoring it firmly into their daily life, Dominique Laquerre has designed and made several artworks integrated to public buildings since 1989. Produced through the Quebec government’s Programme d’Intégration des arts à l’architecture et à l’environnement, most of these works are located inside or outside public libraries, seniors’ care centres, schools, etc.

The designing work and technical research for such projects are done first, usually as part of a call for ideas. Laquerre often takes the results of her workshop research and adapts them to this new context, where the long-lasting nature of the materials and the architectural datas are essential. For some large-size artworks, a team of craftpersons and other specialists is involved along with the artist.

Her latest pieces include outdoor murals and glassworks. The mural installed over the service building of the Cap-de-Pierre Road Park, in the outskirts of Québec City, consists in five discs of finely worked, cut or silk-screened aluminum. At the Centre intégré en Pâtes et Papiers, on the campus of Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières, “Vingt millimètres carrés de forêt québécoise” (Twenty Square Millimeters of Quebecois Forest) is a mural that sets in the poetic realm of the scientific iconography specific to the research centre. Twenty images, each one square meter, make up two vertical mosaics. These images have been silk-screened with enamel on aluminum, using captures on a scanning electronic microscope. Each image reproduces approximately one square millimeter of the surface of a wood chip, revealing a stunning world of beauty. Samples of various tree species have been used, and the images obtained are assembled in order to evoke a tree trunk and the idea of growth.

Carved, crafted, oil painted wood remains a favorite material for Dominique Laquerre’s mural compositions such as the works at La Tuque Forestry School or at the Centre d’interprétation de la Biodiversité in Bécancour.

“Onde et lumière“, her recent glassworks, is a 360 sq. ft. composition made of semi-antique German glass. Natural light floods around the new therapeutic pool at the Centre aquatique Édouard-Dubord of Victoriaville, so the glassworks bring playful colors indoors and let the swimmers enjoy a contact with the surrounding landscape.

Translated by François Couture