Jennifer Bélanger

The director of Imago, Jennifer Bélanger, wants to bring art to people who might not wander into a gallery.
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Bélanger says getting permission takes a long time and is too involved.

I don't know exactly where Jennifer Belanger is leading me. We're going to see the sixth annual Road Signs exhibition, the latest offering by Imago, an artist-run printmaking centre celebrating its 20th anniversary in Moncton next year.It's Jennifer Belanger's fourth year and it's hard to imagine the tidy third floor studio, loft office, and printmaking supply store without her.

You can feel the creative energy when you enter the Aberdeen Centre.Ms. Belanger says this is a great motivator for the artists who work here.Besides a dance studio, galleries, a swanky design company, film production centre, and many artist studios, there is also a daycare in this building - the sounds of children's voices play in this space: high pitched words and laughter seep through the walls, and linger in stairwells.

Up on the third floor is Imago.The price for spaces, says Ms. Belanger, gets lower as you climb higher.Being an artist-run, not-for-profit space makes this a consideration.Ms. Belanger says these days a pat on the back from the Canada Council means not getting cut from the funding circuit.New artist-run centres are springing up across the country all the time but the funding is not increasing.There are more than 120 centres and 70 get funding each year.At Imago, Ms. Belanger is the director, secretary, accountant, technician and housekeeper and the evidence of her presence is notable.She is an upcoming artist with an impressive resume including participation in the group show Evangeline at the Beaverbrook Art Gallery and purchases from the New Brunswick Art Bank and Canada Council Art Bank.An artist in Acadie 5 at Gallery Connexion in Fredericton last year, she is involved in a miniature group show touring in a suitcase.It spent the summer in New Brunswick and is now in Winnipeg before moving on to Newfoundland.Again, frugality is the father of creative invention.Each year on Valentines Day Imago hosts Art en Boite (Art in a pizza box) to raise money for the centre.

And they do this because of their fine obsession with printmaking.The centre just produced a wonderful fold-up description of the actual processes used by artists to create work because says Ms. Belanger, printmaking language and techniques can seem obscure even to other artists.This little black and white photocopied work gives a history and description of Imago, and provides links to other sites describing the printmaking process."Relief," "Intaglio," "Lithography" including dry point, mezzotint, etching, and aquatint," and "Silkscreen or Screen printing" are all covered here."Imago's mission," writes Ms. Belanger, "is to promote and disseminate the work of artists in the field of contemporary printmaking."

This contemporary attitude is evident in Road Signs.We approach the Blue Cross Centre on Main Street and I expect we'll go inside but instead Belanger leads me to a green plywood, stapled fence surrounding an empty lot in the downtown core across the street, and here's the show.Intervention art.
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When the City found the Road Signs on their signs another year, it caused a kerfuffle that, says Ms. Belanger, was quickly resolved.

This year the centre has 13 regular artists but others are welcome to pay to use the space for a day or more at time.There are artist residencies you are welcome to witness and workshops.Ms. Belanger says it's important to take the art out to the people.Besides Road Signs she and another artist have visited schools in Bouctouche and Edmundston to conduct workshops for teachers and students (grade 11 and 12), and last year much of her time was devoted to a group project with an inventive writer and six other artists in creating a printed hand-bound book series, "Negligee."