History of the Petite école du rang ...


The Petite école du rang is located a
sshort drive from downtown Québec City. Fifty years ago it was a small neighbourhood school located in a rural setting rich in colour and life.

After the school board reforms of the 60s and 70s and the arrival of school buses and bigger schools, the Petite école du rang became a movie theatre. In 1987, Lucie Arseno purchased the property and renovated it into a special private residence clearly showcasing the passion of both Lucie Arseno and Yvon Leclerc for art and its colours.

For a little over a decade, Lucie and Yvon followed a number of courses, hosted workshops and worked with different media such as stained glass, oils, aquarelle and sculpture.

Attracted by sculpture and her love of three-dimensional and spherical shapes, Lucie Arseno went to La Borne in France to follow a pottery course in 1987. This marked the turning point of her artistic career: she decided to specialize in ceramics. Her apprenticeship under the tutelage of Raoul Favretto allowed her to experiment with reduction firing.

Following a basement flood in 1994, landscaping of the property and the construction of a workshop, the Petite école du rang was officially inaugurated in 1998. The house specialty is reduction firing, a particular type of ceramics with spectacular colour effects. Even today, the Petite école du rang continues to be a wonderful, flourishing adventure!

I was born in the country where the earth left a profound impression on me: its simplicity, its colours changing as the seasons turned, its forms constantly in motion. My search as an artist was coloured by those early experiences.

It seems appropriate that the earth - clay - has become my means of expression, my way to give back the gift that I received from the earth, the gift that shaped me into a person of contrasts, movement and colour.

My creations are a very personal and ever-evolving reflection of that gift.

Many years ago I discovered a passion as I learned to work with clay. In my search for new effects I incorporated glass, metal and other materials to nurture my creative impulses, taking me further afield as an artist.

   

I was born in my grandmother's house, surrounded by large gardens where she spent her days. She introduced me to the colours of the many flowers there, the play of light and shadow.

I grew up with the interplay of colours and sought out shapes, movement and geometric forms that I clothed with the palette of the rainbow.

For me, clay, stoneware, glazes and fire are a call to colour, a support for its inspiration.

The earth we live on, the earth where we sow grain to feed the world, is the earth with which we shape our bowls: earth to create a multitude of forms.