Melanie Desjardines smells a conspiracy, or else fate circled back around to her, somehow.
When she heard what letter she had been randomly assigned for the Alphabet Project, it was one so familiar it almost made her call the organizers to explain how they got so deep inside her head. The letter O has been more than a little prevalent in her work.
"I had to be deliberate about avoiding it," she said. "A lot of my work now has straight lines, geometric shapes, almost architectural lines, and I swear it was to force myself not to do circles. The reality for me was, I did paint Os all the time: circles, moons, I'm attracted to cyclical symbols. There could be no more fitting letter for me, and oddly enough, I made this one less rounded, more squared off, so it is kind of a hybrid."
In behind her dominant silver O image is a background world of colours all perpendicular to the letter, showing off that linear counter-idea Desjardines was describing in her thought process. But she gives in to the O constantly. Scores of tiny circles are inscribed into the painted lines, almost like patterns on a baseboard.
Adding to that homey feel is the small partial image of a door peeking into the picture on one side. That one item of familiarity in the distance makes the entire image into a conversation.
"When I started, I didn't know where this was going. I knew I was going to use the big letter O as the focus, but the rest just came in stages and everything in my own mind changed when I saw the door in my mind. The door represents all possibilities. Is it locked? Can you open it? Is it where the O came from or where the O is going next? Is the O another kind of door? It's symbolism is choices."
Flip through the below slideshow to view the Alphabet Project art and a link to each artist story:
Desjardines wasn't working entirely in uncharted mental territory with the O piece. She readily admits it is a cousin to one she'd done in the past. She did a collage on metal during a time of instruction at the Toni Onley Artist Project in Wells. It, too, used simple symbols to spark the bigger questions in life.
"Kirk Gable (local real estate agent, downtown revitalization advocate and patron of the arts) purchased that piece and this doesn't happen for me a lot, but it's a piece I actually miss," she said. "That's one of the best parts about being an artist. You create something. You bring something into being. And you can take those ideas or fragments of those ideas and reshape it again and again in other works you do. Maybe you turn that into a series; I have. Or in this case you take some old ideas and you build on them into something new."
Doors open versus doors closed - it's a life theme that has defined the past few years for Desjardines. In addition to being one of the city's best know painters - especially because she does much of her work on thin steel sourced from the sheet metal company she and her husband operate - she is also the proprietor of the region's most known private-sector art gallery. Groop Gallery at Third Avenue and George Street has been her passion project, and its struggles to survive have been the stuff of much conversation in the art community and general public. Operating any small business requires a heavy entrepreneurial commitment, and when you add in the niche-market realities of selling art, the efforts are even greater.
Groop was on the brink of shutting its doors forever when professional photographer Philomena Hughes, thanks to conversations initiated between Desjardines and the Community Arts Council, forged a space-sharing partnership. Groop is not the boutique it once was, but it is still, consequently, a creative hub in the downtown and Desjardines said they would love for a third party to join the team.
"Things are going really well for Phil and I. My whole intention all along was for that place to be a space where artists and the community could come together. I got the machine rolling, Phil has added a lot of fuel, and if we could get one more artist to bring in some extra energy, especially around being there to keep the doors open longer business hours, then I'm loving what Groop could be with all of us working together," Desjardines said. "I think we could make it so affordable for anyone interested in going to the level of having their own storefront that it would kickstart things for the artist sitting right at that point in their career."
The door at Groop is open - as open as a silver O.
