Boomtown sur la lune

The work Boomtown sur la lune, produced as part of the Fund for Arts and Letters of Abitibi-Témiscamingue, with the financial support of organizations and businesses in Old Noranda, as well as the community on Indiegogo can be found at the SADC of Rouyn-Noranda. It is made up of a duo of visual arts and literature.

Artists : Brigitte Toutant (paint) and Alexandre Castonguay (text)

Mediums : Acrylic paint on alupanel

Dimensions : 18 feet x 22 feet

Year : 2017

Photo credit : Ariane Ouellet

Brigitte Toutant is a painter and Alexandre Castonguay writes stories. An idea from December. A permanent work. A text by Alexandre addressed to children. A work by Brigitte integrating literature. Two allies who let themselves be carried away by their enthusiasm. An ambitious project requiring community support. A stormy encounter. To bring the intersection out of anonymity, to taste the fruit of a collision, to invite everyone into this pleasant accident like so many bumper cars invited to ride in procession.

Brigitte had a goal. To create a work integrating Alexandre's text, but not a birthday card (an image and text on top). The text had to have a visual reason to exist, to be justified in a pictorial work. Letters are beautiful, but if you're going to paint them, you might as well treat yourself. True to her habit of always superimposing systems, she filled in the letters of the text with an image and then applied the frame to a second image. Two images as a watermark and letters transformed into colored pieces/pixels. The choice of images was intended to bring together the poetry of everyday life and the magic of aspirations in a common place. Echoing the content of Alexander's text was a matter of course. A huge mosaic whose visual and literary content can be read. The reading will certainly be arduous, which will extend the discovery of the work in time, in small snippets.

In August 2017, the mural was finally realized. Technically, the realization was done in two stages. Brigitte first painted the dishes on the stove, in the spacious summer studio of L'Écart. A year later, in her studio, she applied a vinyl mask and painted the children in the letters of the mask gloss varnish, finally removing the mask.

Words, colors and emotions.

Photo credit : Ariane Ouellet 

A reading that demands that we stop there, that we linger on it...

Photo credit : Ariane Ouellet

It was in 2003 and after his studies in theatrical interpretation at the cégep de Saint-Hyacinthe, that Alexandre Castonguay returned to his native region. It is worth mentioning that since then, the number of trips between Montreal and Rouyn-Noranda for his auditions and projects continue to increase. He also had the lead role in several films including La rage de l’ange (2006), La chasse au Godard d’Abbittibbi (2013), and more recently, Cash Nexus (2019).

An artist of multiple talents, he writes, he acts, and he writes scripts. He is also the recipient of several awards and bursaries, including two in screenwriting from the SODEC, the prix de la Culture (Culture award), volet artiste (Rouyn-Noranda), the prix Artiste professionnel (Conseil de la culture de l’Abitibi-Témiscamingue) (Professional Artist award), as well as the prix Culture et ruralité (Rouyn-Noranda) (Culture and rurality award).

His practice, based on encounters, territory, randomness, accidents, deconstruction and reconstruction of theatrical codes, contributes to the beauty of the region.

Photo credit : Christian Leduc 

Brigitte Toutant was born in Rouyn-Noranda, where she returned to settle after obtaining her Bachelors in visual arts from Laval University in Quebec City. Since 2006, she dedicates herself full time to her art. For this talented artist, nothing is impossible. New daily information is a driving force of creation for her. In her painting practice, she combines the possibilities that don’t go together at first glance. Working also from photos, she integrates collages, paint, and other plastic interventions, seeking both shock and fluidity. For this, she brings together images and textures which, at first sight, don’t have anything to do together.

To date, her work has been presented during individual exhibitions, as well as a part of many regional group exhibitions. Several times an award holder of the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, she has created many private commissions and, since 2008, she has several integration projects of architectural art.

Website : brigittetoutant.ca