PHILOSOPHY

Jocelyn Legault, artist-designer, thinks of inspiration as a mirror guiding us in the making of our art. Inspiration harnesses our needs and taps into our imagination in order that our accomplishments may adapt to our surroundings. Symbolic for Jocelyn are the pine bark canoes of the Kootenays, an aboriginal people from North America. Some of these canoes have pointed ends so they may weave through the underbrush on the slopes of the Rocky Mountains; others, extremities which extend underwater for navigating rapids in the rivers of southern British Columbia. Jocelyn believes that we must adapt to our environment if we wish to create – that is what it means, to listen to our inspiration. This is the philosophy, nourished by the savoir-faire of those makers who have gone before, which Jocelyn draws upon to conceive and to construct his works of art and artisanship: his magnificent wooden sleighs for children.

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The best time of year for gathering the bark of the birch tree is during the midsummer months of June and July. This is when the sap flows most abundantly between the trunk and the bark of the tree, while the wild roses bloom in Alaska and Minnesota, and the luminescence of the fireflies is at its brightest. For Jocelyn, this beautiful coincidence demonstrates the creativity and the playfulness of nature, of life, of light. He takes pleasure in this as a child would, dazzled by these little insects sprinkling their magic over the warm summer nights.

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In his colourful atelier, with the tools of his trade neatly hanging on the walls, its intriguing carpentry machines, and its pleasant aroma of fresh sawdust, we see a photograph of Jocelyn as a young child. In his velvety trapper’s hat, a paintbrush in his little hand, he kneels by a pretty sleigh. For Jocelyn, this photograph evokes the possibility that we choose – or are chosen by – our vocation, even before we come into being.