Made by children
Dix ans d'activites de l'Atelier d'Arts Plastiques du College Brizeux, campagnes d'affiches d'utilite publique
pour la ville de Quimper 1991 -2000; catalogue printed for the exhibition "Un petit bout du Monde" at the
Moulins de Villancourt in Echirolles (F), May 2000; available from Maison du Livre et de l'Affiche, Chaumont (F);
about 80 pages with full page color illustrations, and a 2 page introduction by "Le prof."; 15 x 21 cm;
softcover; in french
It took me a while ( and all the support from the POSTER BIBLIOGRAPHY ) to find out where the College Brizeux was, and that it had something to do with Alain Le Quernec, one of the most respected french poster designers. Since the quality of the posters coming out of this Atelier d'Arts Plastiques was so outstanding, I assumed that it was some kind of secret master's academy that Le Quernec was running to give seasoned poster designers the finishing touch. College Brizeux was, in my mental landscape, just around the corner from the College de France.
So, when I was stranded in the city of Quimper on a rainy day during a hiking trip along the Breton coast, I decided to look up the place. Much to my surprise, I found Le Quernec not surrounded by graybearded artists, but teaching in the midst of a normal class of teenage kids, and he gave me their latest work, a poster against drunken driving. These well known world class posters, that had won prizes like, for example, the silver medal at the International Poster Biennale in Brno 1998 for the anti-drug poster 18 ans overdose, were in fact "made by children", guided by an extraordinary teacher.
Sadly, as I learned from the book, the three weekly hours of art instruction that gave the poster world so many inspiring works, have now been cancelled, and the time of the Atelier d'Arts Plastiques du College Brizeux has come to an end. The book is a farewell to a ten year experiment. Le Quernec, hiding modestly behind the pseudonym "Le prof.", explains in his foreword how a whole term was spend in teamwork for just one poster campaign, starting with a month of research into the subject and ending at the printer for the last fine tuning, and finally putting the posters out on the billboards of Quimper.
Over the years, the topics ranged from the dangers of smoking - and the brutally honest conclusion that "Publicity kills" - to racisme, blood donation and child abuse, and so the students learned much more than just first steps in graphic design and the joys of hard work.
