Exhibit at Ye Olde Blacksmith gallery featuring three local artists

The next exhibition at the Ye Olde Blacksmith art gallery in Rock Island will focus on three local artists – two photographers and a collage artist. Collage is the art of creating pictures using multiple photos from other

sources, like magazines.

The vernissage will be Saturday, August 24, from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m.

Denise Canuel

Denise Canuel moved to Stanstead with her husband about 10 years ago after retirement from the Magdalen Islands.

“My husband loved the Eastern Townships,” she said. “The last house we looked at, we bought it. We fell in love with the house.”

Canuel learned the technique of putting pictures together seven years ago from Julis Garnier. The result looks like a picture or a painting. She gained an interest in the art form out of necessity. “I was not good at drawing,” she said explaining that when her job required her to make a poster, she created a collage. “For me, it’s the best way to express myself. It’s a surprise to myself.”

She sometimes has a theme in mind

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when she begins a project, but mostly, she said, “I look for pictures that talk to me.”

Canuel has a collection of collages created by family photos her mother took, some on the farm where she grew up. She said she can do the same for other families too. It could be a comfort to those with Alzheimer’s disease, she added. “The pictures together make sense.”

Richard Roy

Richard Roy is a photographer-turned cop-turned-photographer. His mother was a photographer so the form came naturally to him when he started taking pictures when he was six with his first camera, a Browning Hawkeye. He still has his first photos, pictures of his grandmother and grandfather taken separately.

When he was first married, photography made the couple their living. He hired out to photograph weddings, which, he said were sometimes boring. “But sometimes you meet some great people.”

Roy became a policeman in Montreal in 1968. “I always wanted to be a cop,” he said. He was able to use his photography skills for the police department with crime scene photos. He eventually moved to Lennoxville, which he said was quieter.

He also worked as a journalist for The Record and the Stanstead Journal.

“I probably wrote about 350 stories, and took even more photos,” he said. “I worked with John Mahoney and Ross Murray, and Charles Bury and Perry Beaton.”

As well, he taught developing and printing color at Concordia University.

Roy stays up-to-date with the latest technologies that allow him a greater range of artistry in his field. “I know my settings and can set them up quickly,” he said.

He has a photo on display that is black and white, yet some objects are in colour. He explained that he shoots in colour with his digital camera, turns it to black and white, and puts some of the colour back in on his digital dark room.

Roy also described how he gets contrast in a photo by using three different exposures – called a “three-shot burst.”

Roy enjoys passing on his knowledge and experience to aspiring photographers.

Paraphrasing a well-known photographer whose name escaped him, he said, “All photographers are voyeurs.”

Tanya Mueller

Tanya Mueller also started taking picture at a young age. She began taking portraits and photographing weddings, but for the past ten years she has been developing art photography.

“I believe nature is the perfect canvas,” she said. Everything is a potential subject. “Scenery, anything I interact with, there are no boundaries – whatever I feel is tasteful.”

Her grandmother’s maiden name was Lenz, Mueller said. “She kicked me off with photography at 10 years old.” Mueller named her gallery “Through My Lenz.”

“It translates, ‘The world through my eyes,’”

Mueller worked for two years with Zone V Photography, a studio from Montreal that had a presence in Stanstead. Zone V focused on fashion, and that’s where she learned studio lighting. She has since developed her own technique with ambient lighting.

She said she always knew she wanted to be a photographer, and she was never daunted during the process. “I’ve always thrived with it,” she said.

“The digital age changed everything,” she added. “And not too many people are getting married anymore.”

Mueller doesn’t get as technical with her work as does Roy, preferring to keep it simple.

“Simplicity for me is best,” she said. “I’m interested in getting the perfect frame. To get the perfect picture, practice makes perfect.”