Jean-Sébastien Gauthier
Saskatoon, Sask.
Jean-Sébastien Gauthier, Fulcrum, 2023. Chopping block and hewn wood, custom software with open-source electronics, 178 x 102 x 46 cm. COURTESY OF THE ARTIST.
Studio: How would you describe your approach to your medium? What made you choose it?
JSG: My approach to sculpture is experiential, a learning process with a creative outcome. My process is less medium specific and more relationship oriented. I seek contact, immersion, within what can be meaningful around me. Recent work on inter being and the shared heritage between species (through collaboration with scientists) has led me to a deeper curiosity about human and tree relationships. I’m quite taken by all the histories of wood, the tools associated with these relationships. I seek a localized more sustainable way of making. I hope to wean myself from extractive thinking into a sharing mentality. Right now I am focused on exploring what a digital folk art practice might be. I want to make things 'by, for and of the people' and pay forward our ways of knowing into the future.
Jean-Sébastien Gauthier, Container (Parenthetical Curly Braces), 2023. Laminated pine, 91 x 91 x 9 cm. COURTESY OF THE ARTIST.
S: How would you describe yourself, personally and professionally?
JSG: I am a deeply curious person who wants to keep in touch with my most playful quiet self. I wish to be kind and compassionate and participate in a good way with the world that surrounds me. Being an artist is a way to keep in close contact with meaningful things for me.
I am a sculptor and media artist who is interested in the relationships we share with other animate life forms as well as our relationships to technologies. I question technologies and their perceived obsolescence. I am also really dedicated to learning, and by extension teaching. In very practical terms, I wish to embody states of art where my making correspondents to sharing with others, from the pasts, presents and futures.
Jean-Sébastien Gauthier, Fulcrum (installation view), 2023. Chopping block and hewn wood, custom software with open-source electronics, 178 x 102 x 46 cm. COURTESY OF THE ARTIST.
S: What inspires you?
JSG: My kids and my sweetheart (Allysha Larsen), intuition, science, animals and trees, Swedish Sloyd, the portrait heads of Franz Xaver Messerschmidt, teachers, all manner of rustic tool making, Japanese wood block prints, folk art in general, barn building, science-fiction, the open-source communities (like processing.org), coding, poetic computation, antiracism and postcolonial futures.
Jean-Sébastien Gauthier, Level, 2023. Birch and poplar wood, projector, custom software with open-source electronics, 91 x 43 x 61 cm. COURTESY OF THE ARTIST.
S: What do you see as your contribution to the field of your craft?
JSG: Though I don’t feel I’ve made much of an impact to my field per se, my hope is that my willingness to engage in tangential ways of creating, far outside my preconceptions, might be of benefit to others in my field. I feel enriched by being present and involved in a 'state of the art’ experience, it is something that is best suited to sharing with others. I hope that through practice I make space for playful exploration, enthusiasm and compassionate presence. I value knowledge, sharing and I hope that my work makes people feel like they can do their own thing. I think art is a collective experience, not an individual one. Perhaps that is what attracts me to folk art at this time. It is a space of making that is far less individualistic.
S: What wisdom do you want to impart to younger makers?
JSG: You/We are enough. Any artist already IS everything they/we need to be. Practice attuning y/ourselves to meaningful intentions then play them through, anyway you/we can. Notice, endure, and even enjoy discomfort. Boredom is an essential creative state, be it. Persist, persist, persist but don’t work all the time! Let the world in, waste time, laugh and nap. Art is a practice that is developed over a whole lifetime. Exert y/ourselves creatively in some way each day. Learn to say what you/we want, then apply for things, often and repeatedly. Join CARFAC. Ask for help when you/we need it and help others a lot (please).
Jean-Sébastien Gauthier
ig: @jsgauthierart
w: https://jsgauthier.com/
v: https://vimeo.com/jsgauthier
This article was published in the Fall/Winter 2023-2024 issue of Studio Magazine.
