Her art comes to life

·        U de M instructor creates realist painting, sculptures

By Rhonda Whittaker

Claude Gauvin’s co-workers are frozen in La Galerie d’art de l’Université de Moncton.

The statues startle some visitors with their lifelike poses. It took three and a half years to create all five likenesses, including one of Gauvin, a U de M painting instructor.

All were constructed from memory; none of her co-workers modelled for the work or provided photographs. As a result, some faces were redone as many as seven times before Gauvin was happy with the likeness.

“The only reason I used the professors was because I knew them,” said Gauvin, 63.

“It’s not a mockery of anyone, and it’s not a skill-tester for me”.

Gauvin made moulds of the faces with polymer clay, then draped cloth over the faces and used glue to stiffen the shape. Discarding the clay mould, she added an epoxy to the form to give it strength. She assembled each figure using human hair or wigs, clothes, and polymer clay hands.

The exhibit, Réflexion sur les apparences trompeuses (Reflections on false appearances) ends today at La Galerie d’art de l’Université de Moncton, open from 1 to 4:30 p.m.

When contacted yesterday, visual arts faculty director Francis Coutellier declined comment on the exhibit, which depicts him looking at a mirror-image painting of himself. In the painting, a can of caviar juts out of his pants pocket.

Photo: Greg Agnew / Times & Transcript

Gauvin likewise didn’t want to talk about the small details that embellish each figure. Instead, she explained what the entire exhibit means.

“When you see someone, your own judgment is made automatically. Should we trust it or not? Is our judgement accurate? She said. “It’s a metaphor of the in-between.”

Gauvin was away in Vancouver when the exhibit was launched and has only recently returned to teaching after being out on sick leave. She said the only feedback she got from the subjects of the exhibits was from ceramics instructor Marie Ulmer, who said the likeness was eerie.

Gauvin said she didn’t expect anyone would be unhappy with the exhibit, but she was also quick to say she has no reason to believe that’s how her colleagues feel.

The Bathurst-born artist came to U de M to teach in 1978 in an attempt to create a more stable life for her two children.

Her earlier career had been more nomadic. A child of Québec boarding schools and a graduate of Notre-Dame d’Acadie, she completed six years of study at

Montreal’s École des Beaux Arts. She then taught drawing, painting, and colour theory at a commercial school in the city.

In the 1960s she travelled overseas to teach in Europe, then returned to North America in 1972 for postgraduate work in fine art. She spent five and a half years teaching at Philadelphia’s Tyler University, where she developed an art program for the public school system meant to help students improve math scores with the help of visuals arts.

“Math is a concept that asks for imagination and what ifs,” she said. “These questions come to artwork easily.”

Had the materials been more affordable, Gauvin would have focused on sculpting. Instead, the technically skilled painter – working in acrylic – depicts the intimacy of interiors and everyday subjects, a direct result of her third role as a mother.

“Because I was with my children all the time and there was always something hanging around the house, I’d use the subject in my painting – things like orange peels on the counter.”

Nearing retirement from U de M, Gauvin has a number of projects on the go right now, including a sculptural exhibit she hopes will become an educational show for children. She’s creating three-dimensional sculptures of children depicted in two dimensions by famous artists. The show – which could eventually feature 20 individual sculptures – will take a few more years to finish.