More door

Hello, j'espère qu'on se "porte" bien...


What is the value proposition of purchasing expensive pieces of art?

Is it in the amount of time one can stay looking at it without loosing interest -- is it the cleverness -- or is it aesthetic appeal?

Is it for investment purposes? If so, is there risk?

These questions are only relevant to the extent that a buyer is willing to entertain them...! This is why fashion houses advertise. This is also why grocery stores have got various magazines, chewing gum and pop cans at the super market checkout.

Clever marketers of non-essential goods know that while things like customer service, brand identity, price and perceived relationships between consumer and brand are important, what is most essential is found at a much more primal level.

My point: 30 years ago the only businesses who could charge big bucks for their products were big, established brand name companies. The same went for art/ artists (and often deceased...).

Today SMB is competing fiercely (and often beating) large enterprise, for the same reason that lesser known _ or "out" artists _ can also attract the big bucks.
Till next time !

J'adoor

It's kind of a play on words, in case you hadn't noticed. A little pop, but also a little classy (first of all it's french-- so one might assume that you speak it, and second, it's a clear allusion to the the Dior "J'adior" campaign).

Personally I prefer the french one better "Portes Epiques" which in french sounds like Porc Épic (porcupine). Portes Epiques literally translated means Epic Doors, but it is interesting because a couple of the doors actually have porcupine quills in them. And it's totally the type of material you would find in one of my dad's (we'll here on out refer to him as Franklin) doors.


Old turn of the century keys from french country "brocantes" (flea markets), bones (many bones), skulls, pieces of musical instruments, fabrics, old printing press impression pieces, crab shells (clean..), animal tusks and horns, skins, children's toys (and random pieces there of), buttons, circuitry.

You can always find very smart social commentary in each door... It's just too bad Franklin didn't mean for it to be there (or so he says). And if you get too intellectual with him, he'll likely slow his movements, tilt and cock his head back a little, squint his eyes at you with a strange look (as if you were no better then a second class art critic), and say something like "...No. That's not what I was thinking when I put those 19th century pocket watch mechanisms with peacock feathers behind the front side of a turtle shell which is cut open along the middle." .... Usually followed by a enthusiastic:

"It's kind of spooky huh?!"

Portes Épiques

Of course, this is not how one is supposed to write "adore". But my father could never resist a good pun. Or any pun for that matter...

An other thing he could never resist was showing off his awesome art... So you could imagine my surprise when upon his retirement around the age of 54 -- he wasn't even considering showing his doors let alone selling them !!

(he's now made about 40 over the span of 35 years)


To all those who might have had the chance of passing by one of his 3 houses in Montreal, St-Germain-en-Laye, or Truro (Quebec, Yvelines and Massachusetts* respectively) then by all means invite your friends to come take a look !

The rest of you can just sit tight.

Now... where was I? ...Right.

While all the walls are scattered with his own artistic black and white photography of nude women (who may or may not have been ex's too... "O-M-G no WAY!"), creatively designed family photos and random antique artifacts & ephemera, the real sticking points for visitors were always the doors.


Can you picture a wrinkly wombat wearing a miniature football jersey, way-farer ray-bans, and a straw stetson hat on stilts?

Well .. neither can I but I thought we could try.

Then picture a collage of African Dada-like Native-American FOLK Art framed in a big wooden door... Assembled in the mind of a deeply disturbed French-Moroccan Canadian immigrant.

...Yes, well I liked the wombat too.