Culture pour tous

Autour de mon jardin

 

In June 2010, a mural by the artist René Derouin, which transforms the L. Dufresne et fils food market into an artwork, was inaugurated. Titled Autour de mon jardin, the mural extends for 160 metres and wraps around the entirety of the recently renovated market building. Installed along the top, 65 conglomerate panels, painted and engraved by the artist and his team of assistants, illustrate nature, the Laurentian fauna and flora, and unfold like a poetic tale: an endless loop revealing nature’s cycles.

More than a mural, Autour de mon jardin is an environmental work that is intended to evolve over time. All around the market, the ground-level landscaping has been designed to include a variety of vegetation, such as climbing plants which will envelop the building and grace it with the seasons’ changing colours. The panels that form the mural will also undergo a transformation due to their permanent exposure to the elements and the progressive plant overgrowth.

To complete the landscaping a thuya hedge will separate the parking lot from the street and mask its visual impact. “A green market,” is what René Derouin had in mind when he imagined the project while he was seated at a restaurant table across from the market.

A real economic and cultural partnership, the creation of this work involved a demanding community negotiation and mediation process. For several years the big shopping centres on the edge of the village were drawing clients away from this heritage market founded in Val-David by Léonidas Dufresne in 1909. “The figures speak for themselves” recalled Jacques Dufresne during the inauguration of the mural. In 2006, he initiated a structured process based on a business plan to expand the market and parking lot so as to offer a service comparable to that of the shopping malls by the highway, some 15 km further away.

With support from the Métro supermarket chain, who provided a financial guarantee framework, Jacques Dufresne presented an expansion plan to the Municipal Council, who determined it to be “too big” and turned it down. It is the idea of expanding the parking lot in the heart of the village that proved to be problematic, so much the more so because it was to involve the moving of an emblematic building—the presbytery—closer to the church.

The space problem goes back several years. Already in 1995, Jacques Dufresne had bought the presbytery from the church administration to acquire the adjacent land and expand the parking lot. Despite this, space remained cramped and traffic a concern. Val-David is a small tourist-oriented village, whose main street is barely 1 km long.

Then came three years of back and forth meetings where each and everyone voiced their opinion, or asked Jacques Dufresne to modify his plan, suggesting that he add this or that additional decorative element; all of which was starting to seriously discourage the developer. The owner’s business realities came up against the well‑founded worries related to Val-David’s future and identity.

Running out of options, Jacques Dufresne announced a deadline beyond which he would have to begin closing. “You can’t mix business with emotions,” he now states as he recalls this difficult time. “I‘ve always wanted to maintain the store in the village. I like living in the village and enjoy the quality of life here.” For Métro, the fact that the Dufresne market is in the centre of the village rather than several kilometres from there, where a competitor was threatening to move in, hardly constituted a convincing argument to keep a money-losing business afloat.

The village, which had already been affected by the loss of the post office and the termination of liturgical services at the church, risked losing another key element of its community ecology. "In villages, places dedicated to services are more esteemed than commercial spaces," says René Derouin, "people meet there, they chat and they identify with the places."

A rallying cultural project

The residents wanted to keep the market in the village, but there was no project all could agree on. It is at this precise moment that René Derouin entered the picture with his dream of a “green” market integrated into the environment, which would rally all behind a common goal. Taking advantage of an artistic creation residency in Percé, he sketched the outlines of his dream by taking inspiration from the rolling waves and the interlaced vegetation… Willy-nilly, he drew many different forms one within another, forms that were subsequently transposed separately and recomposed to make up the final mural, in which the lines follow one another from panel to panel.

Three months later René Derouin and Jacques Dufresne were to make a model that they presented to the Urban Planning Committee of the Municipal Council. The favourable reception unleashed a wave of hope. In March 2009 at the church, which now serves as a community hall, they convened citizens to an information session on the market’s future. People were won over and left with a sense of enthusiasm. “At that point, I felt that people wanted their food market, that it was their store,” Jacques Dufresne recounts. Derouin had understood that the major obstacle was about the integration within the place.

The offer was generous. Dufresne sold the presbytery to the municipality for a symbolic dollar so that it may be used for community ends. He covered all the costs related to the production of the work. For his part, René Derouin worked on a volunteer basis to create and implement the work, and the panels that comprise it will remain installed on the building as long as it houses a food market. “The cost is considerable,” Jacques Dufresne admits, “but other constraints could have incurred similar expenses.” Autour de mon jardin is thus the outcome of a daring partnership which benefits all and which reinforces the village’s cultural character and identity.

The completion of the work was spread over two and a half years, of which seven months were dedicated to production—with four assistants—in a vast space of the former Rolland paper-making facilities. The final drawing was digitized and cut into sections corresponding to the building’s structure. In his industrial-size studio René Derouin worked out the definitive features. His small crew of loyal collaborators took care of further details by hand or mechanical spindle; they complete the artist’s work by harmonizing the curves, softening the grooves and preparing the surface to receive the paint.

In June 2010, the work was inaugurated in a joyous atmosphere. On the same day an important retrospective exhibition dedicated to René Derouin opened at the Centre d'exposition de Val-David. As for Jacques Dufresne, now that this adventure is behind him, he says that he marvels everyday when arriving at the market: “Each time I have the impression of discovering a new work. And I believe that both the employees and the clients are proud of it.”