Pasadena People: Catherine Menard, Environmental Design Student

If you ask Catherine Menard what she does, you probably won't hear "artist." If anything, she might smile and ask, "What do you think I am?" It's in good fun - the 26-year-old is a bundle of smiles and bouncy hair - but one gets the sense it's her way to get people to engage and think on their own.  

"I have this belief that you don't call yourself an artist, people do," she said. "And then you prove it." 

Menard, an environmental design student at the Art Center College of Design, recently won the Pasadena Armenian Genocide Memorial Competition, which featured 17 proposed design concepts for a memorial to commemorate the Armenian Genocide. The concepts were judged by the Pasadena Armenian Genocide Memorial Committee. The proposed site is, perhaps fittingly, Memorial Park in Pasadena, with the dedication slated for April of 2015.

The college describes Menard's concept as "a carved-stone basin of water straddled by a tripod arrangement of three columns leaning into one another—is a single drop of water that falls from the highest point every three seconds, each 'teardrop' representing one life lost. Over the course of one year, 1.5 million tears will fall into the pool, the estimated number of victims of the Armenian Genocide." 

Born in Louisiana, the French-Cajun Pasadena resident moved to SoCal when she was 4 years old, living in Upland and Los Angeles before finding Pasadena. She sat down with Patch to chat about her work on the memorial.

Patch: Your design won, and I read that your initial reaction was shock. What's going through your mind now?

Catherine Menard:  Thankfully, I have amazing people who are going to kind of guide me through this process. Stefanos Polyzoides is going to be my overseeing architect. We went through a broad overview of what this is going to look like in stages. We still very much need to continue to present to the city of Pasadena, because initially for the competition regulations, there were to be no working systems, no water systems, the regulation height was five feet … all of these things that I paid no attention to whatsoever (slight laugh, smile) because I thought the concept was so strong and had to be a certain way.

Luckily, (Polyzoides) feels that way too, so we're going to try prove ourselves in saying that this is the way it needs to be built, please allow for this, please allow for the Pasadena budget to accommodate, and possibly get some donations from the Armenian community to upkeep such an involved memorial.

Patch: What's it like building something that memorializes a tragedy versus anything else? What emotions does that bring up?

CM: I couldn't even approach it. I didn't feel like I knew enough, so I just read and I read and I read. I interviewed my Armenian friends. I did everything I could to just let it get into me. And aside from not having the direct knowledge of this particular genocide … being an American girl, I feel so detached from this kind of conflict, tragedy or brutality … how does anyone relate to this?

Patch: What are some things you learned about the Armenian Genocide (and in researching other kinds of genocide) that really struck something within you?

CM: They killed the artists and intellectuals first. That hit me … you're annihilating a culture's artistic creativity and brilliance instantly. In the displacement of the American Indians, they would just march them to death. There are these images … these skeleton mothers holding these skeleton children. That got me more than anything, because how can you be at the front of this line and watch this? That imagery is what finally inspired me to say 'Look, this is horrific. We have to look at these images, and of course it's awful, but you have to understand this true atrocity. Otherwise, we're going to stay removed from it and say 'Oh, 1.5 million people, what does that mean? That doesn't sound like a lot to me.' But when there's a pillar of water falling every three seconds to count the 1.5 million people for the year, you can sit and start to really imagine the power of that person being lost."

Patch: Was there ever a worry about such a piece being too dark?

CM: Absolutely. Initially, I just saw that death image, that triangulated, pyramid-like or gallows-like form, saw potential for that abstraction … but it was too much, it was too terrifying within itself, it needed that balance. I was able to balance it with the water and this hope of eternity and this everlasting collection that gathers the spirits. The form is weeping. It's mourning each death. Yes, it's terrifying itself, but it has that balance … I think I finally found that in the ultimate design.

Patch: People are going to take pictures next to this. People from different generations of a culture will be checking this out ...

CM: It blows my mind. When my boyfriend brought this to my attention, we were having kind of a celebratory dinner, and he was walking me through this scenario … I was so emotional, I just couldn't … I'm still emotional! That is it! You're just able to impact a people where it matters so deeply to them… that's all I hope is that they want it, and that they love it, and want to come and take pictures with it and to be a part of it and tell their story. That's what it is. That's what it's for.

Editor's note: Since it's so early in the process, no images of Menard's design are available to show. As more details become known, we'll share them with you.