jennifer belanger has been searching for, and finding, and finishing the projects you started and then abandoned to the second-hand store. jennifer finds your half finished model car kits with missing parts, your not-yet-completed quilts, your wooden clog-making kit. she takes these in-need-of-completion projects home, (or in this case the gallery) and finishes them for you. once completed she returns the projects to the second hand store box where the « work of art » is re-inserted onto the store shelves.

jennifer tells me this project is about building patience. her patience with the fiddly little intricacies of model building, or with painting a tole scene onto the wooden box (she hates painting apparently,) or figuring out how to needle-point. but i think the project is about subverting expectations, about surprising the unsuspecting consumer with a « slightly off » perspective.

for example, the model car is now completed, but it has a small scene added on the rooftop. a tiny figurine ensemble of laundry being hung on the clothesline, a small boy and his mother around the laundry basket. or the tole painting. for this project jennifer researched the craft, finding out people used to paint scenes from their family history onto furniture with the intent that this furniture would be handed down from generation to generation. those family members who were the least skilled at painting would invariably end of with dark furniture (because they had to repaint over their mistakes so many times the work would become « muddy ») plunked in a dark corner. jennifer decided to begin at the dark end of the scale, painting her family scene in white against a black backdrop.

jennifer has has been performing the task of building patience and developing her sociability by working at a table in the space of the gallery. she has also been photographing the transformation of these objects and displaying them in a photo gallery of « before » and « after » shots. this work is on display at skol (372 ste-catherine) until saturday the 26th of september.

jennifer bélanger: http://ineverreallylikedyou.blogspot.com