Artist’s Statement
I shoot to express, address and possess.
Each frame contains my curiosity, physicality and knowledge, each an idea or moment in time. Together, they form stories at the intersection of people, their homes and communities and omnipresent nature, constructed, and re-constructed, in the first and third person.
I work in colour and black and white, in documentary, editorial and abstract forms, in accord with each subject. I look, first, for beauty, but delight in ordered disorder, elements of surprise, and movement in repose. The narrative structure reveals itself through bold composition, careful juxtaposition, and select revelation, demanding a second and third look.
Déclaration de l’artiste
La photographie est pour moi un moyen d’expression, d’interaction et de compréhension.
Chaque cliché incarne ma curiosité, affirme mon état d’être et sollicite tout mon savoir, car chacun représente une idée, un moment dans le temps. Ensemble, ils racontent des histoires mettant en vedette des personnes, leur chez-soi, leur communauté de même que la nature omniprésente, qui se construit et reconstruit, à la première et à la troisième personne.
Je travaille en couleurs et en noir et blanc, en forme documentaire, éditoriale et abstraite, selon le sujet. A priori, je cherche le beau, mais je tire plaisir du désordre ordonné, d’éléments de surprise et du mouvement au repos. La structure narrative se dévoile d’elle-même par une composition audacieuse, une juxtaposition soigneuse et une révélation choisie, qui exigent toujours un deuxième et un troisième regard.
Artist’s Bio
A Canon SLR and a high school darkroom clinched it for photographer Andrea Cordonier. She describes the urge to create as “a beautiful beast with a will of its own.”
Cordonier pursued photography as an avocation alongside consulting, community development projects and a return to school to study construction carpentry and green building.
She studied and observed and shot and edited her growing body of work, resulting in a substantial archive of images. She moved from film to digital and now back to film, graced with a 1957 Hasselblad, a gift from a fellow enthusiast. She began part-time studies at SPAO in Ottawa.
A year ago, Cordonier mounted her first solo exhibition, ELEMENTAL, with the purpose of learning the ropes as a professional artist.
Her second exhibition, IF I WAKE (LMNTL No. 2), opened on September 16, 2018 and explores the foundational role nature plays in our creativity, mental health and primary existence. Without it, she argues, we evolve away from our humanness.
Nearly a thousand editorial images accompany her writing at Habicurious.com. The content marks a synthesis of architecture, building, design, art and culture, nature, history and the psycho-social considerations of how and where we live.
Cordonier was part of the team from the Workers History Museum that photographically catalogued the networks of industrial buildings of the E.B. Eddy site (Ottawa River, between Ottawa, ON and Gatineau, QC) prior to its redevelopment. With a focus on detail, the project took 12 months to complete.
In 2018/2019, she looks forward to submitting to competitions, securing representation, showing in group and solo exhibitions, and identifying creative collaborations, especially those that combine photography with building/making, writing, social justice and/or community cultural development.
From Vancouver, Cordonier lives in Burritt’s Rapids, a rural village on the Rideau River in the City of Ottawa.
www.habicurious.com
www.andreacordonier.com
www.elementalphotographic.com
www.ifiwake.com
Notice biographique de l’artiste
Il a suffi d’un simple reflex et de la chambre noire d’une école secondaire pour qu’Andrea Cordonier ait la piqûre de la photo. La photographe décrit son besoin de créer comme « une douce rage qui s’empare d’elle ».
Andrea Cordonier s’est consacrée à loisir à la photo pendant qu’elle offrait ses services d’experte-conseil, travaillait à des initiatives de développement communautaire et effectuait un retour à l’école pour étudier la menuiserie du bâtiment et la construction durable.
Elle a étudié et observé et photographié et retouché un corpus d’images grandissant, qui est devenu un fonds d’archives photographiques substantiel. Elle est passée du film au numérique avant de revenir au film, cette fois avec un appareil Hasselblad de 1957 reçu en cadeau d’un autre amateur de photographie.
Il y a un an, Andrea Cordonier a monté sa première exposition solo, ELEMENTAL, parce qu’elle voulait apprendre les ficelles de la profession d’artiste.
Sa nouvelle exposition, RÉveil (exposition no 2 de la série LMNTL), s’ouvre le 16 septembre 2018 et explore le rôle incomparable que joue la nature dans la créativité, la santé mentale et la qualité de vie.
Plus de 800 images éditoriales accompagnent ses textes dans Habicurious.com. Le contenu opère une synthèse dans les domaines de l’architecture, du bâtiment, du design, de l’art et de la culture, de la nature, de l’histoire et des éléments psychosociaux ayant trait à notre façon de vivre et aux endroits où nous vivons.
Andrea Cordonier a fait partie de l’équipe du Musée de l’histoire ouvrière qui a travaillé au catalogue de photos du complexe industriel de la E.B. Eddy (rivière des Outaouais, entre Ottawa [Ontario] et Gatineau [Québec]) avant son réaménagement. Il aura fallu 12 mois pour méticuleusement mener à terme cette initiative.
En 2018-2019, elle compte soumettre ses photos à des concours, se trouver un agent, présenter ses photos dans des expositions collectives et solos, et être à l’affût de possibilités de collaboration artistique, surtout celles qui allient la photographie et la construction/la fabrication, l’écriture ou le développement culturel communautaire.
Partie de Vancouver, Andrea Cordonier habite maintenant à Burritt’s Rapids, un village sur la rivière Rideau dans la ville d’Ottawa.
Series/Exhibitions:
If I Wake (LMNTL No. 2), Opens 16 September 2018
Habicurious (“Birds of Chicago”), Festival of Small Halls, Burritt’s Rapids, 2017
E.B. Eddy Industrial Site, Ottawa/Gatineau, Carleton University, 2015
Habicurious (ongoing)
Stories Behind the Work:
1.
The Provencher/Red River/Esplanade Riel (Verso/Recto)
Series: If I Wake
Materials: inkjet print on Premium Luster
Image /Frame Size: 15″ x 52″
Available prints: #4, #5 (of 10)
2017/2018
I’m a huge fan of Winnipeg and argue it’s the most interesting city in Canada. It is a particular pleasure to discover on foot.
The Provencher and its twin, Esplanade Riel, are parallel bridges across the Red River connecting downtown Winnipeg with St. Boniface, the historic French neighbourhood. The Provencher carries vehicles and the Esplanade only foot and bike traffic.
In the city’s four rivers, the Red, the Assiniboine, La Salle and the Seine, Mother Nature rules with an iron fist. The history of Winnipeg is closely tied to its history of severe flooding and efforts to contain its flow. This is the fourth bridge to span this location.
Employing bridge as a metaphor, the twins connect cultures, neighbourhoods, histories, spirit and the natural with the man-made. They achieve a balance of masculine and feminine in their form, function, design, decoration and interaction with their surroundings. The work of Guy Prefontaine and Étienne Gaboury and many others, they are at once soothing and exciting.
The Esplanade is a side-spar cable-stayed bridge, whose soaring central spire, signifying a place of meeting in the middle of the Red River, creates shadow play on the reddish-brown flow below. The Provencher is close enough to admire, but far enough away to get lost in the serenity of the pedestrian bridge. There’s a perfection here that’s palpable. As Jim Thomson, director of Public Works for the City of Winnipeg, says: “It gives one the impression of walking in an outdoor cathedral.”
2.
dePicto 1.0 49.0209°N, 122.8057°W
Series: dePicto
Materials: inkjet print on Premium Luster
Image /Frame Size: 15″ x 52″
Available prints: #4, #5 (of 10)
Photos & Assemblage: 2018
From the words “depict” and “pictogram”, dePicto is a series-in-the-making about places of personal significance. Each is a composite of more than 100 photographs of textures, forms or objects specific to the chosen place, composed to create an ideogram that conveys its meaning through its pictorial resemblance to a physical object. What you see is, in fact, what you get.
Using your device, type in the given coordinates to find out the origin of the piece.
3.
dePicto 1.1 49.0209°N, 122.8057°W
See above.
4.
Stella Maris
Series: Variations on a Public Space
Materials: inkjet composite print on Premium Lustre
Image /Frame Size: 8″ x 12″/18″ x 21.5″
Available prints: #4, #5 (of 10)
2012/2016
Composite of 2 photos:
Stella Maris 1
Earthbound/Unbound/Maurer 1
Stella Maris 1
Ah, Montreal.
Tucked into Vieux Port, the Notre-Dame-de-Bon-Secours Chapel, with its carved boats suspended from the ceiling, is a place of quiet and an intimate, architectural wonder. Founded in 1771, it’s one of the oldest churches in Montreal.
Stella Maris – Our Lady, Star of the Sea – is an ancient title for the Virgin Mary.
According to the Catholic Church, the Virgin Mary intercedes as a guide and protector of seafarers under the Apostleship of the Sea. Coastal churches are often named Stella Maris or Star of the Sea. Monseigneur Ignace Bourget, Bishop of Montreal, gifted a Stella Maris, with her halo of stars, to Notre-Dame-de-Bonsecours. Stationed on the roof of the Chapel, the Virgin Mary welcomes mariners, and other travellers, with open arms.
I feel the gaze and benediction of this Mary as I look down from the belvedere. She has been immortalized by Leonard Cohen in his song, Suzanne (“And the sun pours down like honey on our Lady of the Harbour”). With her high above and out of reach, I photograph a lesser being – a copper angel – framed by the port and the St. Lawrence River.
Earthbound…Unbound 2003
Bound for Paris but stuck in Pearson Airport, I explored the Authority’s public art collection and was dumbstruck to find Ingo Maurer’s “Earthbound…Unbound 2003”. Like an oversized fish tank without the fish, its plastic “ice cubes” randomly bob and weave on jets of bubbles, a kinetic sculpture.
Maurer wrote: “We are successful when we manage to trigger a feeling in people”. The feeling he triggered in me was the desire to stuff the piece in my suitcase and take it home. I’m not ashamed to say I lusted after it for its simplicity, mesmerizing nature and playfulness.
I photographed it mercilessly as passengers passed behind it, moving in and out of my frame. It wasn’t until I revisited Stella Maris that I knew I had found a perfect match for Maurer’s controlled and enclosed water in the ancient power of the St. Lawrence River. The angel looks out from a sea of plastic cubes and it somehow fits: a co-mingling of the wild and the contained. We see what bubbles up to the surface.
Earthbound…Unbound 2003 by Ingo Maurer (German, b. Island of Reichenau, Lake Constance, Germany 1932)
5.
Egeria
Series: If I Wake
Materials: inkjet composite print on Exhibition Fibre
Image /Frame Size: 8″ x 12″/18″ x 21.5″
Available prints: #4, #5 (of 10)
2012/2018
Composite of 3 photos:
La Vierge a l’Enfant, 2012
Lake Ice 1, Lake Ontario, Kingston, ON, February 2018
The Pantheon, Rome, 2012
Egeria was a nymph attributed a legendary role in the early history of Rome as a divine consort and counselor of Numa Pompilius, the second Sabine King of Rome. According to mythology, Egeria imparted laws and rituals about ancient Roman religion to Pompilius, who transcribed her teachings into sacred books that he took to his grave.
She traded wisdom and prophecy for libations of water or milk at her sacred groves in Rome. These groves, with wondrous, religious or medicinal properties, were used exclusively by the Vestal Virgins, Priestesses of Vesta, Goddess of the Hearth.
La Vierge à l’Enfant
The Vatican Museums are Aladdin-like caves of immeasurable treasure. There is an overwhelming volume – a too-muchness – of priceless works that make it impossible to take any measure of it in on a first visit. On my 4thvisit, I discovered this Madonna with baby Jesus in Room 14, the Matisse Room. It is a full-scale preparatory sketch for a piece of his work in the Chapelle du Rosaire, Vence, Provence.
With a minimum of strokes, it stands out in its simplicity and perfection against adjacent walls and floors of rich frescoes and patterned tile. Matisse, in his mastery and perfection, has captured the essential, universal beauty of motherhood. In a few strokes he captures the numinous, what we fail with words to describe. This, I can point to and say, is how the divine mother – and most every mother – feels.
Lake Ice 1
It’s unnerving to walk on lake ice, even in a deep winter freeze. But the exquisite offshore ice formations on Lake Ontario are a siren call. In this second image, tightly-packed, repeating cube-like shapes mimic the coffered dome of Rome’s Pantheon.
Pantheon 1
The Pantheon (the temple of all the gods) is a former Roman temple, now a Catholic church dedicated to St. Mary and the Martyrs.
With its coffered dome that symbolizes the heavens and a central opening (oculus) to the sky, it is an inside/outside kind of building.
The only natural light enters through the entry door or the oculus. As the day passes, the light moves around the building in a reverse sundial effect. The oculus also serves as a cooling and ventilation method and an underfloor drainage system whisks away the rain that falls.
After two thousand years it is not only durable, a feat of engineering, and aesthetically perfect, it remains as fantastical and awe-inspiring as can be imagined.
6.
Naiads (Lake Mazinaw)
Series: If I Wake
Materials: inkjet print on Somerset Velvet
Image /Frame Size: 20″ x 30″
Available prints: #4, #5 (of 10)
2017
In Greek mythology, Naiads are a female spirit, or nymph, presiding over fountains, wells, springs, streams and other bodies of fresh water.
Overseen by the goddess Artemis, Naiads were nurses of the young and the protectors of girls, overseeing their safe passage from child to adult.
The lake’s name comes from Mazinaabikinigan-zaaga’igan, meaning “painted-image lake” in Algonkian, referring to the pictographs on Mazinaw Rock. The lake is surrounded by cliffs rising straight out of the water. These pictographs, within unceded Algonquin territory, are believed to have been created by Algonquin ancestors.
I know of no one that doesn’t feel the mystery of the place.
7.
Source-Seine/Goldstream River
Series: If I Wake
Materials: inkjet composite print on Exhibition Fibre
Image /Frame Size: 8″ x 12″/18″ x 21.5″
Available prints: #4, #5 (of 10)
2012/2014/2018
Composite of 2 photos:
Sequana, Source-Seine, France
Rain 1
Sequana, Source-Seine, France
My four kids in tow, I set out from Noyers-Sur-Serein to discover the source of the Seine. Like most parents, I may have over-promoted the adventure. A walk through a rather pedestrian forest led to a muddy puddle rather than the anticipated gushing, or at the very least flowing, stream that we collectively hoped would be some kind of source of magic. But from this common puddle/depression, and a few other unseen ones like it, France’s second-longest river flows 776 kms before it empties itself into the English Channel on the Normandy coast.
In Gallo-Roman religion, Sequana was the goddess of the river Seine, particularly the springs at the source of the Seine, and the Gaulish tribe, the Sequani. The magic of the place lies in the steady stream of pilgrims since the 2nd century BC who came to “take the waters” and make offerings to Sequana. They brought modelled parts of the human body, wooden and stone images they hoped would bring cures for their myriad illnesses, and tossed them into the spring. Along with the tiny feet, heads and arms, they offered coins and jewellery, now on display at the Archeological Museum in Dijon.
La ville de Paris eventually purchased the land, so it’s possible to stand in Paris while in the Chatillon Plateau valley, Borgogne.
In the 19th century, a statue of Sequana was placed in a man-made stone grotto, bathed in the trickling waters of the Source-Seine. This is what tourists, like us, first encounter when pulling off on the D103. At first appearance, it’s disappointing, just another French statue of a naked woman. But, really, how disappointing can it be to stand on the site of one of western civilization’s original wishing wells? Or to be able to pinpoint the precise place where the miraculous life-giving waters of the Seine begin? Is it even possible to imagine Paris (or the rest of France) without it?
Rain 1
This time we’re camping in the rainforests of Vancouver Island. Gigantic raindrops form perfect circles on the Goldstream River (SELEKTEL).
The river meanders and forms deep, cold, clear pools nestled in primordial surroundings. This was artist Emily Carr’s favourite place in the world. But even more importantly, these waters have been, since human seasons began, the sacred bathing pools of the WSÁNEC.
I was born in the Cowichan Valley, on the northern end of the Malahat Drive, under the same fecund cathedral of green. These dripping, mossy giants, which I can’t begin to reach around, are incomparable to any man-made structure I can imagine. They’re living perfection beyond our conception yet we insist on chopping them down. Unimaginably foolish we are in so many regards.
8.
Reconstitution (Just Add Water)
Series: If I Wake
Materials: inkjet composite print on Exhibition Fibre
Image /Frame Size: 8″ x 12″/18″ x 21.5″
Available prints: #4, #5 (of 10)
2016/ 2017
The image of the woman and her Chihuahua standing in front her shop on Rue Notre-Dame in Montreal is one of my favourite street portraits. The tiny dog brings a lightheartedness to the image, but there’s also a sense of mystery and maybe something darker.
The dog looks at the camera and is fully seen, whereas the woman is only identified (or identifiable) by her feet. But even then, who, with the exception of herself, would recognize those feet as hers? She has been “cut off at the knees”, truncated, silenced. With the watery overlay, is she melting further into the background or reconstituting herself to be more clearly seen?
9.
Drive-By Shooting Saskatchewan 1, 2 & 3
Series: Drive-By Shooting
Materials: inkjet print on premium luster; glass faced on aluminum frame (full bleed)
Image /Frame Size: 5 images– dipytch (2) 21.75″ x 59.75″ + 12.5″ x 19.25″ (1)
Available prints: Currently, 1 set of 5 images, framed as above; please enquire about other sizes
2014
I am heart-broken that torrential rain is falling – and scheduled to keep doing so – for the three days we’re meant to camp in Grasslands National Park in Saskatchewan. I have saved some of the best for last, a coveted new stop before we make the final push home to Ottawa after a summer on the road.
I relinquish driving duties to Husband and crawl up into the passenger seat to sulk. But how can I sulk when I see THIS through the rain-streaked window glass?
10.
Boy + Bird
2014
At the Second Beach pool in Vancouver’s Stanley Park, a crow waits patiently for his turn. Out of sight, on the right side of the photo, is a drinking fountain. When the boy is gone, the bird will hop down for a sip of fresh water then return to his post.
11.
Bird in a Bag
2012
It is August and hot as Hades. Vendors line the piazza outside the Colosseum. An Asian woman makes delights out of fresh palm leaves. You choose the one you like, she pops it in a plastic bag, inflates it with a humid breath, and ties it off with a filament of fibre. It is a wonder within a wonder.
12.
Eyebox 1
Series: Eyebox
Materials: inkjet print on Exhibition Fibre
Image /Frame Size: 16″ x 24″/
Available prints: #4, #5 (of 10)
2016
A camera obscura (Latin for dark room) is a rudimentary optical device that was the precursor of modern photography. It is made from a box of any size or a blacked-out room with a small hole in one side. Light from an external scene passes through the hole and creates an upside-down (inverse) image on the back of the box or room.
Artist Franc Van Oort’s Eyebox is the roomy size of a small shed. It is meticulously designed, built and embellished and contains an unexpected surprise; a black plywood wheel the size of a large pizza pan is fixed to a post and inscribed with white directional arrows. He has mounted the shed on a rotational device akin to a turntable found in old locomotive roundhouses. If you stand adjacent to the wheel and crank, the camera obscura lurches forward and begins to turn. If you photograph the continuous projections, it’s possible to end up with a 360° degree view of the surrounding landscape.
Here, my son walks inside the Eyebox and is covered with two inverse landscape images: one natural and one imposed after the fact.
13.
A Picture of a Picture of a Tree
Series: Variations on a Public Space
Materials: inkjet composite print on Exhibition Fibre
Image /Frame Size: 16″ x 24″/
Available prints: #4, #5 (of 10)
2018
In 2018, Canada unveiled its National Holocaust Monument in Ottawa, the last of the WW2 allied countries to do so. The monument “communicates themes of hardship and suffering while conveying a powerful message of humanity’s enduring strength and survival.”
Six photographs of Holocaust sites of importance by Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky have been recreated as monochromatic murals on the expansive concrete walls.
“A Picture of a Picture of a Tree” is derived from a small piece of one of these murals.
Details of the photograph and collage:
The maple leaf references the monument’s Canadian roots. The three falling leaves – from a Burning Bush (Euonymous alatus) – represent the death of six million Jews during the Holocaust, drops of blood falling on snow.
The three tree branch bars reflect the diminishment of the prisoners’ direct contact with nature as detainees. Three black bars mimic prisoners’ striped pyjamas and reflect the theme of memorial: loss, memory and survival.
The black bars are mid-winter photos of trees taken using Eyebox, artist Franc van Oort’s life-sized pinhole camera. Apropos, pinhole camera images reflect the world turned upside down.
14.
A Small Gallery of Meditations on Being Outside Doing Whatever Pleases You
A collection of images wheatpasted on a pass-through wall.
15.
Bella, St. Ferreol-les-Neiges
Series: Variations on a Public Space
Materials: inkjet composite print on Exhibition Fibre
Image /Frame Size: 20″x30″
Available prints: #4, #5 (of 10)
2017
We wake up and go outside in our pyjamas, my daughter and I. This will be her home for the school year, her first time away for more than a week. It is the first day when the air is cool enough and the land still warm enough to make fog. In the apple orchard, the dry stone wall separates the fog from the forest. We spend our last few hours together in our private, contained world.
16.
Grove, St. Ferreol-les-Neiges
2017
Morning in a foggy mountain grove, in the picturesque style.
17.
Look Closely
Artist: Guest Artist – Falseknees
Materials: inkjet print
Image /Frame Size: 19” x 29”
Available prints: 10 (not limited edition)
Year: 2018
Is the glass half full or half empty? A philosophical mini-tale of beauty in the graphic novel style.
18.
Dante & Persephone
Series: MTA New York City
Materials: inkjet print on Premium Luster
Image /Frame Size: TBD
Available prints: #4, #5 (of 10)
2017
One morning in March, a foot of snow fell and Manhattan was not itself.
It was possible to cross streets without looking, there were dog sleds in Central Park and locals stopped to hug on sidewalks. The media proclaimed it Snowmageddon and most everything was shut down. My son, Dante, and I headed underground, to the subway, to explore a hidden gem of an art museum.
If you walk or taxi everywhere in New York, it’s possible not to be aware of the Metropolitan Transit Authority’s magnificent underground art collection, installed at various stations throughout their system. Here, in “The Return of Spring, the Onset of Winter”, artist Jack Beal “uses classical mythology to comment on the relationship between what is above and below the surface” (literally and figuratively), employing mosaic to illustrate the tale of Persephone.
Persephone is abducted by Hades, Greek god of the underworld, so there she must stay forever. Her heartbroken mother, Demeter, a goddess, intervenes, negotiating to bring her home. However, Persephone breaks her requisite fast by consuming a single pomegranate seed. Her punishment? She must remain six months below and six months above ground, so marking her function as the personification of vegetation – the seasons.
As we pass by the installation (is she leaving or just arriving?), Persephone and Demeter keep a close eye on Dante. Perhaps they recognize a soul mate in his namesake’s (literary) excursions through heaven, purgatory and hell?
The mosaic is located in the Times Square subway station, 41stStreet/7thAvenue mezzanine.