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A Visit With J.P. Olivier Fougères, « Master Framer » |
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A Visit With J.P. Olivier Fougères, « Master Framer » |
by Marie-Pierre Tremblay
September 2000
When he retired in 1994, Olivier Fougères* decided to devote himself to his family, his sculpture and his love of beautiful frames - plus, of course, the NFB Club, of which he is a staunch supporter. One lovely September morning, he invited me to his framing workshop. Join me in visiting him !
The first room we enter is filled with 2,000 to 2,500 samples of card-board mats, all kinds of mouldings, squares of glass of different thickness, samples of his work, and a price list for works by well-known artists. In the huge adjoining room are precision tools and essential supplies neatly arranged on the many shelves, as well as art magazines, unfinished works covered with white cloths to protect them from the light, and small packages wrapped up in pink and green paper for delivery. These proudly bear the company name Le Cadreur de l'île and its symbol: a leaf of the ginkgo tree, a member of the fern family (fougère in French) which can live up to 1,500 years and has all sorts of therapeutic benefits.
I am enchanted with the light, the immense table in the centre of the room, the many unfamiliar objects, the weights, the iron, the hairdryer... What can be the purpose of all these things?
"That little tool you just touched is a pair of pliers I use for stretching canvas," says Olivier. "I bought it in Paris in 1976, thinking I might use it one day." But it was not until nine years later that he first tried his hand at framing on occasional visits to Marcel Desrochers, a former NFBer who was making frames in a scenery workshop at Place des Arts. A few days after retiring, Olivier decided to investigate whether he really wanted to devote himself to this interest. "That was when I did a four-month apprenticeship with a friend in Pierrefonds. I knew I wanted to work with my hands but I didnt know whether I had the necessary patience or manual dexterity, and I didn't know whether I could spend hours on my feet. However, this experience settled all my doubts, and so I bought the business assets of a Blainville company and I installed all the equipment in my home. Obviously I had to make a lot of changes, putting in extra electrical circuits, a compresser in the garage and air ducts in the ceiling, and then remodelling... It took me six months but now everything is set up just right."
Photographs, watercolours, canvases, papyrus, animation film sequences - all stimulate his astonishing creativity. "Each time someone comes to me with a framing job, I feel an immense pleasure at working with something beautiful and new. I enjoy searching for the way to show the work of art to advantage. " His efforts meet with success: an example of his work appeared in a photo on the cover page and a full inside page of the December 1999 issue of the American magazine Framing Collectibles in Shadow Box Frames.
Olivier has another surprise in store for me: on the second floor, a very large room has been converted into a workshop for cutting framing mats. Here are mats by the dozen in all dimensions and colours, along with the highly sophisticated equipment for making straight, round or oval cuts, edges, etc. "I use only acid-free mats, " he notes. "They protect the artwork and keep it from yellowing." He may spend up to 12 or 15 hours on his feet as he selects, cuts and adjusts the mats. "I must say that my wife helps me a lot in choosing the mats. She has excellent taste. "
"For me, it's a hobby. I love doing this and I don't begrudge my time. Still, now and then I have to behave like a businessman because I've invested a good deal of money in this outfit. Right now, without advertising, I do a little over 250 framing jobs per year. That's more than enough to recoup my expenses and give me all the pleasure of doing fine work. "
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*Olivier Fougères joined the NFB in 1963 as a distribution officer in Rimouski. He was then posted to Quebec City and Montreal, where he was put in charge of sales for all the province of Quebec. Next he worked on special projects for Média Recherche and then Société nouvelle and Santé Afrique, again as a distribution officer. Then he made the big leap to producing films. His credits include such films as Kluane and Initiation à l'escalade. Around 1985 he returned to his first love when he agreed ta be in charge of the film and video libraries (Distribution Services). In 1988-89 he organized the event A Salute to the Documentary and shortly after joined the Média-Sphère project. In 1993 he was put in charge of institutional sales, and in 1994 he retired.
