Montreal (AFP)
In Montreal, artist Patsy Van Roost makes balconies speak and passers-by smile at the time of confinement by creating bright, multicolored foam banners, with a personalized message.
"The idea is to spread a little love for people during their solo walks. Walk and fall on a small message as if a neighbor whispered something to us in passing," she explains.
"People offer me messages that I turn into banners, and that they will install on their balconies so that their balconies can speak to passers-by while they are confined inside," says the artist.
Since she started her project on March 26, Patsy Van Roost has created more than one hundred and fifty waterproof banners.
"It's like little caresses strewn across the city" and as if "our balconies are talking", she sums up, as she busies herself with the sewing machine.
"I only do that, day and night," she said, cutting letters by hand one by one before sewing them.
Her project doesn't stop there: once people receive and install their banners, they send her a photo which she maps on Google Maps "so that people can take a virtual walk from one banner to another ".
Not everything is rosy. She has just received a new order from a woman in Montreal, whose mother, 92, who lives in France, "is dying".
"Obviously she can't go there. So she wanted a banner that said" bon voyage my dear mother + ", which she is going to hang on her balcony here in Montreal, to help her mom leave".
Patsy Van Roost's banners are multiplying everywhere in the streets of Montreal. Valérie Menguy is very happy to deploy hers, which proclaims "I live in love and laughter".
For a couple expecting a baby, the artist has created another one: "Here life multiplies".
"Courage has no age," says that of Quebec actress Louise Latraverse, a friend of "the fairy of the Mile End", as she nicknamed Patsy, named after the district of Montreal where she lives.
"Poetry in the street, in front of each house, you can't find anything more inspiring than that," says the actress.
© 2020 AFP