Featured MFA: Louis-Charles Dionne
Our featured MFA this week is second year sculpture and installation artist Louis-Charles Dionne!
Louis-Charles Dionne is a multidisciplinary artist and educator from the South shore of Montreal, Quebec. He holds a BFA in Sculpture and Art History, and a graduate diploma in Post-Secondary Education from UQÀM. Dionne re-positions prosaic artifacts in order to twist and question relations with everyday objects. His work reorients the material cultures around us through slight shifts in their composition, framing and utility.
Check out more of his work here: www.louischarlesdionne.com
What are you working on right now?
For the past year, I have been carving a fitted bedsheet out of a slab of ordinario bianco (‘ordinary white’) marble. I carved the first side over the summer and fall semester, flipped the stone in early January, and was carving up to the last day we had access to our studios, before the lockdown. When it happened, I was finishing the last portion of the carving: the elastic band (3 more days and I would have been done!) Carving the elastic band was challenging. It is the defining feature of a fitted bed sheet so it is the part I really could not mess up. On the other hand, it was very satisfying to see this last little touch tie all work together.
In the present context, it is a bit hard for me to continue stone carving on my kitchen table so, instead of the physical work, I have been spending time working on the written thesis.
How do you relate/see your studio?
There are a lot of objects in my studio! I work with found objects so the studio is where I accumulate them and live with them for a while. Some of them end up in installations/compositions, some are just great studio buddies, and some I just eventually get rid of. I need to spend time with these objects to figure out who they are, what they want to do, what I would like them to do, and what could be a successful compromise.
Is there an object in your studio with significance/a story? Maybe it’s just weird?
One of the first objects I brought to the studio is this piece of driftwood I found on the waterfront. It is actually a tree. I had help bringing it in my space, I think, in the first month after starting the MFA program. I picked it up for two main reasons: 1) the tree had grown around a small rock that it is still holding on to 2) it is covered with worm tracks that create a pattern very similar to cross-hatching. I spent two years with it and still have not been able to use it in any forum. Now it feels like it is a completed work in itself.










