Historical Vignettes
The Sculptors: Three-dimensional Masterminds
Laporte teaches his students, young and old, an "appreciation for allegory and the art of poetry - fine arts as an expression."5 Luc Charette, Media Arts artist, former assistant curator for the Musée Historique du Madawaska and now assistant curator of Galerie d'art Louise-et-Reuben-Cohen de l'Université de Moncton, previously stated:
(...) we never attributed to Laporte the honour of being an innovator when he first applied plaster moulding to clay sculptures, on wire frames as well as on wood; his sense of discovery applied to form and matter couldn't help but inspire a feeling of typical Madawaskayan independence in all citizens as well as in their sons. Like the "outsider" Laporte, who fosters a creative spirit in the men of Madawaska, those of the generation between the Depression and the After-War, (Claude) Roussel carries on the spirit of the 1960's in the south eastern part of the province.6
P.C. Laporte was therefore Claude Roussel's first mentor. Roussel, an Edmundston native renowned wood carver, sculptor and painter, mastered all possible media throughout his career.
Laporte is keen on the idea that it was he who discovered the artistic possibilities of Claude Roussel, one of the Republic's sons, (...) a born artist, a true artist, capable of imagining new things and producing them. He becomes aware of this potential when Roussel shows him a plaque entitled Trout in 1944, an artwork he created using only a file and his own intuitive knowledge.7