Atelier Denu is an arts organisation in Ottawa, Ontario, and in Gatineau, Québec, Canada.
The organisation takes its name from atelier, which means workshop, and the old English denu, which means valley. The Ottawa Valley surrounds the Ottawa River from Mattawa to Hawkesbury.
Mandate
The mandate of Atelier Denu is to train its members in life drawing and other figurative art, to train its members in storyboarding and other sequential art, to develop professional competencies for models, to organise illustrators and models in solidarity, to promote figurative and sequential art to a broad public, to work with other progressive organisations to achieve social justice, and to host special events on- and off-campus.
Atelier Denu is an accredited community service offered to all students frequenting the University of Ottawa or the Université du Québec en Outaouais and to any person wishing to attend its activities.
Weekly life drawing workshops
Atelier Denu realizes its mandate principally by way of drop-in life drawing workshops offered at each University on a weekly basis. The two-hour life drawing workshops are priced with cost recovery in mind.
The workshops have been held in the University of Ottawa’s Laurier building at the corner of Cumberland and Laurier. In its first year of operations, Atelier Denu ran 19 such workshops. In its second year, it ran 23. There have been several drawing sessions with food, with themes (Valentine’s Day, books, bicycles, conflict), with costumed models, and with two models.
In its second year of operations, Atelier Denu ran 12 summer workshops at the Sandy Hill Community Centre under the name POS3S, each composed of three poses, 30, 45, and 60 minutes in duration.
In its third year of operations, Atelier Denu expanded to offer drawing workshops at UQO. It has since offered life drawing workshops at the University of Ottawa's Graduate Students' Association (GSAÉD) building, above the Café Nostalgica, and more intimate drawing and painting sessions offered in participants' homes.
In 2017, Atelier Denu launched a 17-week life drawing summer school at the visual arts department of the University of Ottawa.
Other activities
Each year as a closing activity, Atelier Denu organised a free, sustainable transportation still life drawing event in collaboration with the Bike Coop of the Student Federation of the University of Ottawa.
Atelier Denu trained 11 models in its first year of operations and 14 models in its second year.
Atelier Denu twice participated in the City of Gatineau's Grand ménage du printemps to clean up municipal riverside parkland.
December 7, 2015 marked a shift for Atelier Denu, as it was accepted as a producer for a show at the Ottawa Fringe Festival for the 2016 season. It put on a play "Art class in session. Nude model. Please knock." held in the Studio Léonard-Beaulne at the University of Ottawa, which had six presentations.
Chronology
The first weekly life drawing event of Atelier Denu at the University of Ottawa started on October 8, 2010.
The first weekly life drawing event of Atelier Denu at the Sandy Hill Community Centre started on June 16, 2012.
The first weekly life drawing event of Atelier Denu at the Université du Québec en Outaouais started on September 17, 2012.
The Ottawa Fringe Festival play ran from June 17, 2016 to June 26, 2016.
The life drawing summer school ran from May 11, 2017 to August 31, 2017.
Contact
The e-mail address of Atelier Denu is atelierdenu@gmail.com
The web site of Atelier Denu is http://atelierdenu.blogspot.com
The facebook page for Atelier Denu is http://facebook.com/AtelierDenu
The twitter name for Atelier Denu is @AtelierDenu