These Walls Tell A Story

Stella Kalaw’s digital art illustration is based on Laurent Gascon’s tile mural of singer Pauline Julien on Hogan Street in Montreal.

Sometimes a wall is not a barrier. It can be a bridge that leads to other worlds, even some close to home.

This was what Archie Fineberg discovered when he picked up a camera. In the latter part of his career as an accountant, photography became a diversion. It appealed to his artistic instincts. His interest was encouraged by his wife, the Montreal writer Elaine Kalman Naves, and while Fineberg professed to have no ambitions to go public with his pictures, she pushed him forward until his hobby turned into a passion.

In the early 2000s, Fineberg took a Photoshop course hoping to improve his skills. An assignment sent him into the streets to take a picture, any kind of picture. He had noticed a lot tagging around the city, and while this did not attract him, he occasionally saw artworks that filled walls, especially in inner city Montreal.

He asked around seeking where these images came from. No one seemed to know, who did them or where they were. Finally, someone at city hall told him: “Just drive around. Walk around. You’ll find them.”

And so he did, scouring the Island of Montreal from top to bottom and from one side to the other, taking pictures of the murals he found everywhere. His muse, Kalman Naves, said, “You should mount an exhibition.” He was reluctant. Why do all that work? He just wanted to take pictures. But because he always—or almost always— listens to his wife, there was an exhibition in the Pointe-St.-Charles neighbourhood.

Do a book, Kalman Naves said. Again, reluctance, but then he took up the challenge. Fineberg approached several publishers. They were unenthusiastic. So, in 2017, he self-published a book. Besides taking the pictures for what became Montreal’s Street Art Gallery: The Best of the City’s Graffiti and Wall Art, he wrote the text, had the book printed, and he distributed it by car to bookstores around the city.

Journalist neighbours from The Montreal Gazette heard about the book. They helped get a story in the paper, a two-page spread. Suddenly the book was in demand. When Fineberg went to the bookshop at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, he hoped he might leave two or three copies. “We’ll take 24,” the manager said. Soon, he had sold 2,000 books. By Canadian standards, he had a bestseller.

It led to a second book on wall art, and now a third, published a few weeks ago, thanks to a chance meeting with the artist Laurent Gascon.

One day while driving around the city’s east end, Fineberg noticed a wall installation going up that looked unusual. Instead of an image being painted on the wall, it was being created with ceramic tiles. Fineberg inquired at a dépanneur about the artist, and he left his phone number for the artist to call.

The artist, Gascon, did, and that led to an unusual collaboration—and friendship. “He was an east ender,” Fineberg said. “We liked each other, but I don’t think he had many Jewish people from the west end of Montreal coming to see his work.” Or any anglophones for that matter.

“What appealed to me was his talent, Fineberg said, “because it is so different from what I had done for a living, as an accountant, a comptroller.” Here was an artist, in situ.

In fact, while little known on the English-speaking side of town, Gascon is an established artist who has worked in several mediums, including oil paintings, posters and inflatables, that is, balloon-like creations, one of which, called Floun, travelled the world as a symbol of Cirque du Soleil.

But it is Gascon’s tile works, commissioned by the city, that have set him apart. Like Fineberg, he’s DIY. He takes thousands of tiles, individually cut, and he paints and assembles them into wall-sized portraits. It’s time-consuming, but Gascon does it all, except for the grouting,

Wall art is not unique to Montreal. It’s in cities and towns around the world. Wherever it appears, it is usually an expression of the ground-level culture of the place in which it is found. Gascon creates wall-sized representations of well-known Montrealers and they now dot the city: Yvon Deschamps, Diane Dufresne, Robert Charlebois and others. They are stars from a recent past, and they’ve returned to the streets on which they lived to form a visual reminder of the vedettes who created Quebec’s identity.

Fineberg’s discovery of Gascon stirred in him another book, which became Laurent Gascon: Ceramic Portraits in Public Spaces/Portraits en céramique dans les espaces publics. They collaborated in French and English. As is often the case in this city, Gascon’s English was excellent, while Fineberg stumbled from time to time in French. “You can say that in English,” Gascon reminded him.

A few weeks ago, Fineberg did a presentation of the book at the Côte-St-Luc Library, a bastion of English-language and Jewish culture in Montreal’s west end. He invited Gascon. The artist was hesitant to make a foray into what was for him the unexplored wilds of Anglo Land, but he did. When Fineberg asked him if he would take questions from the audience, he agreed to that, too. “He stole the show,” Fineberg said.

There are a number of takeaways from Fineberg’s adventures in the art world. One is that it important to feed your curiosity, to break away from the humdrum of a daily routine. It is important to keep moving, even in retirement, in fact, especially after having left a career job.

Another is that art transcends barriers of culture and language. English and French, and the words and habits of many other cultures in Montreal, are filtered through porous membranes of mostly goodwill. It’s what makes the city great.

Finally, it’s always a good idea to listen to your spouse.

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Archie Fineberg has a wonderful website about his books and Montreal street art.