The desire to hold a festive summer sculpture event is still alive and well in Saint-Jean-Port-Joli. This village, situated on the shore of the St. Lawrence River in Quebec, hosted its first sculpture symposium in 1984. Since then, depending on the residents involved, the initiative has taken various forms. In the summer of 2014, the new team of organizers traded the usual ten days of “artists working in front of the public” for exchanges and collaborative work among the participants before the encounter with the public. These collaborations coincided with a series of activities at Parc des Trois bérets from July 24 to 27, 2014.

Planning for the event went beyond just putting together a program as serious consideration was given to the content and theme. The curator, Nicolas Mavrikakis, and the organizers were able to instill a deeper level of reflection into this popular festival. Bois d’oeuvre, rendez-vous au coeur de l’ouvrage (Lumber: a rendez-vous at the heart of the work) put wood at the core of the creative process for seven artists and businesses in Saint-Jean-Port-Joli, paired with seven artists from urban areas – six from Montreal and one from Toronto. How can these pairings be described without succumbing to the pitfalls of diametrically opposed practices and, especially, creating a hierarchy between artist and artisan, urban and regional, contemporary and vernacular? The curator and the organizing committee chose, in fact, to base the event on these pairings and the possibilities for encounters and exchanges among different

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