Louie Rochon

Louie Rochon is a Canadian-American sculptor born in Chicoutimi, Quebec. He moved to Southern California at age 4, speaking only French. In his early adult years, he spent 10 years in the restaurant business, 7 of those years with Carl's Jr., a multi-state chain, working up from manager to management training instructor to multi-unit supervisor, responsible for 11 restaurants (10 of which opened in one year). After this career he moved to Eagle River, Alaska to get as far away from Southern California as possible with his first wife and start in the real estate business. Rochon made a fortune in the real estate boom of the early 80's and promptly lost that fortune when the market busted, at which time he filed for bankruptcy and moved to Washington to start over again, from scratch.

Again, in the booming market of the late 1980s and early 1990s, he once again amassed a small fortune and built quite a reputation for marketing and promoting. After 15 years in real estate, he decided to leave real estate and start a marketing company, wrote a few books and hit the seminar circuit, traveling around the US to teach 'Strategic Power Marketing', primarily to real estate agents. After a few years of doing this, recuperating from a devastating divorce, suffering incredible depression and relapsing into a drinking addiction, Rochon wandered around for a few years - utterly lost.

Walk Across America

It was at this low point in Rochon's life that he decided that he needed to do something. While driving through the Arizona desert one hot day, while praying to God for help, the crazy idea of walking across America popped into his head. Rochon subsequently trained for a few months and hiked about 800 miles in the Arizona desert in the summer of 1996. Over the summer, he sold all of his world possessions.

Prior to starting the walk Rochon had read the book "A Walk Across America" by Peter Jenkins that informed him that he would, most likely, receive a tremendous amount of publicity. This, would provide a great opportunity to do be able to do some good for some deserving cause. After researching and learning that world peace and hunger were primarily a political problem, Rochon came across pediatric AIDS. Once meeting a couple children with AIDS and hearing their story, he had found his cause.

On September 15, 1996 Rochon got on a plane and flew to Miami, to start walking back to Seattle, via San Diego, a journey of 5,200 miles that would take him just over two years to complete. In that time, Rochon reached over 9 million people with Pediatric AIDS awareness and raised tens of thousands of dollars for various AIDS organizations.

On October 11, 1998, Rochon and his 12-year-old son Alex walked hand in hand the last few steps up to the base of the Space Needle.

Art career

What Rochon hadn't foreseen was the incredible 'Post Trauma' depression that he spiraled uncontrollably into after completing this monumental feat. For 3 years, he had a definite purpose and goal, all consuming of his energy, time and resources. When it ended, without another passion to pursue, his life felt like an incredible black hole. This depression, which lasted over four years, coupled with debilitating relapses of extreme suicidal alcoholism and drug addiction almost killed him. Having lived through this period of time, Rochon assumed there was more he needed to do in this life.

After having put some sobriety time together and picking up some of the scattered pieces, with a lot of help from friends and family, Rochon decided that he wanted to start a new life over doing something that he loved, with passion, that could conceivably make a difference in this world. He needed something that would provide the outlet for his insatiable appetite for expressing himself, allowing him to unleash "the demons from his soul", so to speak. Rochon decided to become an artist.

Aside from the fact that he had no formal training and knew nothing of art, Rochon went to the library to check out some books to learn how to become an artist. He discovered a book entitled " [http://www.amazon.com/dp/0879051639/ The Simple Screamer] ", a book by Dan Reeder showcasing and describing how to build papier-mâché monsters. His creations struck a nerve with Louie; they were tongue in cheek, colorful and fun, yet providing a medium that was so versatile that would be unlimited with potential, allowing him to create, 3-dimensionally, anything that his mind could conceive. They reminded him of "larger than life" cartoons. Rochon had found his medium and immediately commenced to build his first "creature-ation". From this led inspiration to create many more pieces, each one providing a means to express himself more fully.

As Rochon has always done in his life, he decided that in order to insure that he would not fail in his latest venture as an "Artiste", he would burn all of his bridges behind him, thus forcing him to complete what he had started. He decided to take the last of his resources, take his son Alex with him and move to a place where they knew no one, open a gallery and studio in which they could work and "Go For It", in a big way. This is exactly what they did in the fall of 2004, moving to Ocean Shores, Washington, a small oceanfront community. Rochon and his son built the studio and gallery over the next few months and opened for business late December of 2004. The name of the gallery is [http://rochonsculpture.artspan.com/ Rochon Sculpture Gallery and Working Studio] , but the locals have come to call it "The Strangest Little Art Gallery in Washington", a name that became so popular that Rochon wrote this name in large white 18-inch-tall letters across 20 feet of window frontage of the gallery for all to see.In 2005, Rochon closed his gallery and moved to Whidbey Island, where he now works out of a studio in his home.