I’ve met with the executive director and the program director of Ming Studios to prepare for my residency starting February 6th.

MING Studios is an international contemporary art center and residency program in Boise, Idaho. The gallery brings international artists to Idaho and introduces new opportunities for regional artists. Ming serves the community by hosting innovative programs including workshops and cultural activities, performances, screenings, readings and artist talks.

Keeping active between meetings and emails, I’ve verified files, edited text, printed and cut the last eleven volumes of City Shields.

Through the conversations, the scope of the exhibition has changed. Subsequently, we wanted the viewers to capture the nature of artists’ books. The spotlight is no longer on City Shields but the idea behind my work.

I appreciate simple moments characterizing our lives, building our history, whether sensational or monotonous. Fascinated by memory and identity, the day-to-day events entertain me.

I want to familiarize the readers with mundane activities that link us together to regain our childhood innocence. Autobiographical references are characteristic of my work, which centers on the act of collecting and storing my memories, my self-identity, and my environment. I study my surroundings with camera in hand and accumulate memories. My process of investigation continues as I manipulate images in Photoshop and iMovie, re-organize, write and plan my artists’ books. I finish a book when my conceptual framework reads as a physical object.

A digital method of reproduction gives my books a contemporary look. I work with different binding structures that respond to the book in question. The final product is a limited edition book representing the mundane in a unique, imaginative, and dynamic way for the reader to experience.

This video is my interpretation of the game Decision of the Flower: She loves me, she loves me not, originally Effeuiller la marguerite. I present this game in the French style making the potential outcomes more numerous. "Il/Elle aime un peu, beaucoup, passionnément, à la folie, pas du tout" (translates to "He/She loves me a little, a lot, passionately, madly, not at all"). I created four small flip books that demonstrate these outcomes: m'aime pas du tout (loves me not), m'aime un peu (loves me a little), m'aime (loves me), and m'aime à la folie (loves me madly).

The exhibition represents how I collect, document and archive using my complex, French Canadian culture.