Leather goods / Design / paper art

The play of appearances and being is a needed Masquerade.

Everybody is unique, and becomes even more singular through its experiences.

Everyone cultivate its secret garden, whether it is assumed or not, revealed or concealed, manifest or disregarded/unknown.

We are all broken faces who succeed more or less at hiding it.

This key theme in Catherine Loiret artistic approach is represented through time under three different forms:

– The transparency, the burned and the words

– The engraving and the inks

– The paper

During 10 years, Catherine sealed burned made out of wood and paper in Plexiglas topped with some more or less decipherable handwriting, leading the viewer to read between the lines. 

It is a graphic representation of the human ambivalence of being unique but trying to fit in and conform by hiding what makes them special. To figure it out, you must read what’s hidden, wonder: why are we trying to be transparent? 

The burned elements that make the words even more indecipherable highlight the importance of burns that can’t stay hidden forever. 

The importance of secrets is a key theme in her art as much as the necessity to read between the lines to find out the secrets, understand them and beyond. 

– The engraving or the secret gardens deconstruction        

Depicting various floral composition that highlight secret gardens’ ambivalence and plurality.

Those life allegory are designed with flowers coming from all over the picture that meet in the art work center… They represent the way life shaped us whether we liked it or not.  

Those flowers that grow and overflow the garden

Such as the unconscious that can’t hold back.

This life who bring those flowers to us, time that goes

And reinforces, this flying time that goes and leave some marks.

Tell me about your garden and I will know who you are.

Which land built your roots, determining how you grew.

The way you treat your flowers, determine how they grow. 

Catherine works on the connection between a secret garden and its construction, deconstruction, but also the way it look, which part of our secret garden we show. 

She believes a secret garden is made out of a human essence, it comes from everything, everything that make a life, what we choose, and what we faced. This garden is never done, we reshape it during each step of our life, but every secret garden is unique, just as the engraving painting. 

– The paper or the being-appearance dichotomy          

Catherine crowds tell us that regardless of the number of secret gardens, they are all different, even if they often look alike. The crowds are the best hiding spot for secret gardens, that’s why Catherine keep showing them in her art by making several paper crowds. Each individual difference fades in those gatherings to make a homogeneous group. In crowds, you can only see the detail that makes someone unique. 

The paper,

It’s the pleasure of ephemera, of fragility,

It’s the voice of ephemera and fragility,

That’s what comes out of water, of life, that’s what gives and takes life.

Born and raised in what we call a large family, Catherine Loiret has a special perspective on family gathering, friendly get-together and social meeting. Through time she discovered that everybody want to be seen without revealing their true self. 

Giving to others and to yourself your finest social mask, without revealing your weakness, to prevent your secret garden exposure. Nevertheless, it seams like crowds and secret gardens are simultaneously related and opposed. 

Each detail in Catherine’s crowds is essential. The paper fragility highlight people’s fragility, the paper torn reveals their singularities, everyone’s personal accidents, the paper whiteness remind us of life as a blank sheet, and the colors symbolize auras. 

In a crowd, everybody puts a mask on, but if you watch carefully, you can see people’s torn are in a continuous evolution, they want to please others, to be a part of the crowd. 

Catherine is trying through her art, to reveal that each individual stays unique while conforming to the rest of the crowd. This prism influences her paper manufacturing process. Indeed, it is the accident of the mix in water that will determine the paper thickness and shape. It is also through torn, the essence of every individual, that she gives life to her characters. She form her crowds based on the harmony between the characters she creates, giving them their aura, or leaving them undistinguished in the crowd.   

“I create crowds and secret gardens because of those countless thoughts, after spending years working on burn and transparency.” Catherine Loiret

Through many different techniques, Catherine is trying since day one to highlight the human ambivalence. Her researches and her art are like a secret garden: continuously evolving and never really complete.

In 20 years, Catherine worked on fire and water, on black and white in her creative process trying to figure out what makes every individual’s essence.

We are born with a past, our ancestors’ story, and from that point we shape ourselves through life events and our choices. 

The grey areas in the paper crowds symbolize what everybody hides to others. Crowds maintain everybody’s secret gardens that you reveal to some lucky ones. It’s what we call the friendship art. 

See the art gallery here