Where the colors come from
March 21, 2018
Sophie P-Voyer, founder of Atelier Retailles, is looking out the window, impatiently waiting, waiting for that something that will change everything. One year ago, just out of school with her BFA, at the age of 28, wondering how to satisfy her impulse to make and connect, intuiting that creative minds in Montreal needed a place to make paper; she decided to start a business. In November 2017, she ordered a Reina Hollander beater, and it is coming TODAY! This tool is key and Zed, her dog, loves it right away. This day is recorded as the date of birth of Atelier Retailles.
From then on, Sophie will use exclusively fabric trimmings that she will get from local designers to make her papers. This repurposing defines her goal and vision; it is the foundation of her project, how she values materials and people around her. It also defines her papers; all the colors, and the range is wide, are inherent to the fabric cuttings she transforms. No pigments or dyes are added to the pulps.
A retaille, in French, is the part of a material cut during the manufacture of an object, for example, the offcuts of fabrics from the design of a garment. The associated verb retailler defines the transformation of an initial object into something new and refined. The essence of Atelier Retailles resides in the idea that the cut material remains useful material. The material’s properties, including its color, are welcomingly received as they are, and an inspiration for the direction to take, always a magical transformation.
The true color
January 8, 2019
Atelier Retailles is nine months old and Sophie makes resolutions for the new year: “This year will be under the sign of collaboration, ‘being together,’ meeting new people, zero-waste, slow creation, and open-mindedness.” Atelier Retailles is essentially a one-person-run project, but there are, and Sophie is so grateful, numerous humans generously contributing all along.
Thinking back at what was accomplished, it is obvious that collaboration is another key. Embroidery, weaving, and drawing on, with, and within handmade paper with Veronique Buist, the collective laboratoire-oeuvre, and Cath Laporte; all have punctuated the studio production.
Paper on stage, colored by light
January 18, 2020
And now dance is making its way in. And it is not only about Sophie dancing around in the studio while making paper. The paper she produced for the artist Jacinthe Derasp becomes a fluid sculpture, dialoguing with the dancer’s body in Habitat, a choreography by Bettina Szabo.
Colors in an envelope
May 8, 2020
Due to a series of unforeseen but fortunate circumstances, Maia Celeste Donnelly joins Sophie in the studio during Covid isolation. A precious friendship emerges, and also a new project: a monthly, sometimes bi-monthly subscription project in the form of thematic envelopes in editions of 50 to 75. During the pandemic, Sophie delivers them on her bike to subscribers around the city. Each envelope includes nine handmade papers. These nine sheets are as many explorations on a chosen theme. The fourth one revolves around the notion of tints; the ninth edition is a collaboration with Cath Laporte and Granite Farm 1981, where “art and carrots grow.” Granite Farm 1981 is an organic micro-farm dedicated to the ecological production of vegetables. It is also a playground where the latest thematic envelope was created; paper samples for this edition are either formed in the pond, dried on the rusted barn roof, or made with plants collected on the farm’s ground.
From there on, Sophie and Maia become inseparable partners. Until August 2022, when she leaves Montreal to study paper conservation in Kingston, Maia is Atelier Retailles’ master papermaker, book binder, and solution finder.
Mixing colors
February 5, 2021
Sophie undertakes a new collaboration: this month and until the end of April, with Marc-Olivier Lamothe, every Friday will be a play Friday! These days are pure fun; a set of foam stencils and five pulp batches of different colors will combine and generate infinite variations in paper compositions. After each session, pulps are drained and stored in the fridge; before each session, they are carefully mixed to create new colors: no repetition, no pigmentation, always working with the colors of the repurposed materials.
The color of change
June 25, 2021
Big move. From a second-floor studio shared with other creators, Atelier Retailles is re-opening in its new location, with street frontage on St-Laurent, one of the city’s most important commercial boulevards. Sophie and Zed are exhausted and happy. This new space includes two separate rooms, which allow for a “clean” space where papermaking workshops and collaborations take place, and a “dirty” one, which gets covered in pulps and filled with beater and fans sounds. A ramp is built to connect them; equipment can roll up and down, bikes and skateboards too.
Reconfiguring CMYK
March 25, 2022
The artist Bosny, in residency at Atelier Retailles since the beginning of February, is collaborating with Sophie today to make large-scale pulp-painting portraits. On a white base sheet, using a projector, they trace a face with cyan, magenta, yellow, and black pulp following a reaction-diffusion (or Turing) pattern. They tweak the traditional color sequence, CMYK, to suit the project needs and colors that are on hand at the time (from available fabric trims). YMCK is the new order. At the end of the day, the paper portraits are drying in the front windows, looking at pedestrians walking by.
Always gray
June 22, 2022
This has become a tradition at Atelier Retailles: every six months, they make a pile of 18 x 24-inch sheets with their “fabric-offcuts paper offcuts,” a second round of papermaking with everything that is cut out to get straight edges or funky shapes, pulled out because not fit, and every bit of pulp that finds its way on the studio walls and equipment. Zero waste. So far, it always turns out gray; it is always, also, a beautiful surprise.
Bright colors on the horizon
December 13, 2022
Sophie tells me about her plans and challenges for the upcoming year: many workshops, training a new assistant papermaker, and a grand celebration, a festive fundraising event, for the fifth anniversary!
