André Fournelle arrives at the door of his home studio on rue de Bullion dressed in a navy long-sleeved sweatshirt and a pair of black work trousers, a wild, silver crown of hair sprouting in every direction, bright blue eyes dancing.

He smiles, revealing a set of pristine white Chicklets, inviting me inside and down a narrow hallway lined with antique bookcases, rolled-up tubes of blueprint paper, and various pieces of twisted metallic sculpture that serve as Fournelle’s signature, a brand he has honed over more than 60 years as one of Quebec’s most celebrated artists.

On the kitchen table, which he also designed, sits a bowl of tortilla chips and a food processor full of cilantro dip. “We have to eat all of this,” Fournelle says, pouring himself a splash of Spanish orange wine into a glass marked “Darling,” after the bar, not the foundry, Fournelle is careful to make the distinction.

I have always understood that how you do anything is how you do everything, and I watch intently as Fournelle cuts perfectly uniform, razor-thin portions of chorizo onto a rough-hewn wooden cutting board.

“Would you like to eat something?” he asks. I select a slice of sausage and say thank you, surveying the space, which is neatly and logically arranged, yet crammed full of all manner of sundry items, a hallmark of every artist’s studio I have ever been invited to visit.

Piles of books and documents here. A workshop overflowing with tools and trinkets there. A birdcage in the loft. Vases. Razor wire. A Ziploc baggie-full of utensils. An Ibanez electric guitar in the corner. “I would love to meet Roger Waters,” he divulges. And art, of course — lots and lots of art.

I hadn’t realized until recently that I had lived for decades among Fournelle’s monumental sculptures in some of my favourite spots on the island of Montreal: The White City, a crop of black monoliths surrounding an ivory Roman-style column at Parc René-Lévesque; States of Shock, fragments of deformed Wrought iron fence that overlook the shoreline further down the St. Lawrence River at Parc Fort-Rolland, and a number of other striking works permanently mounted at the Outdoor Museum in Lachine.

It was in 1992, during the installation of Cubic Space, or homage to Malevich, when a mighty wind whipped up along the riverbank and blew over one of the cube’s glass slab sides, shattering it into a million shards.

“Nobody was hurt,” recalls Fournelle, pulling a ham and cheese pie out of the oven. “But it was very close.” Evidently, Fournelle is no stranger to daring feats, making friends with fire, mastering the four elements, and putting himself in harm’s way for the sake of his own art.

Perhaps Fournelle’s most famous accomplishment was igniting a Line of Fire in 1999 across the Pont des arts in Paris, the pedestrian bridge which traverses the river Seine, linking the Institut de la Langue Française on one side, and the Louvre on the other.

“I presented the idea of that project in 1994, for the opening of the Jeux de la Francophonie,” Fournelle tells me. “And really, at the last minute, it didn’t work.”

Nonetheless, Fournelle persisted for several years. “We asked for permission, first from the mayor of Paris, then with the prefecture. There were seven other organizations involved. It took six months, full-time. We talked and talked and talked, and I explained the project, and I made a huge book that explained everything.”

Eventually, Fournelle enlisted Groupe F, a well-respected French lighting and pyrotechnics company, for assistance.

“It was on the evening of June 21^st, on the Summer Solstice,” he remembers. “And we had a lot of obligations because there are boats that pass under that bridge at all times of day and night, so that complicated things. It was a huge logistical job. We finally got official authorization, and we had to communicate with the boats passing underneath. But it was very well-choreographed. We were in constant communication via walkie-talkie. And finally, the fire lasted three minutes. All of this for three minutes.” However, the piece is immortalized in photographs, in a 21-minute French documentary film, and will live forever in memory.

There was a time in the 1960s in Montreal that Fournelle didn’t ask for permission for his performance pieces, the renowned art historian François-Marc Gagnon labelling him a “cultural terrorist” for releasing flocks of live chickens, and setting fires in empty urban spaces.

“My trademark is the ‘X,’” he divulges. “And I made a big ‘X’ on Bleury Street and Ste. Catherine. It was huge. There was a building which they were about to demolish, and I put a big neon ‘X’ on the side of the building, and when they demolished it, the crane used the ‘X’ like a target. And after, I made a big ‘X’ in fire in the empty space. Then, the fire department came, and I had to discuss it.”

Fournelle began as an aspiring biochemist, but quickly favoured the artist’s path. “I completed some studies, but I was a dropout,” Fournelle admits. “I preferred music. I wrote poetry. I went to art school with two cans of paint and a mop, and they told me to get out. Then I worked in a foundry — a mobile foundry. I am an autodidact. Not bad for an autodidact, huh?”

Indeed, at 84 years of age, Fournelle is still active and showing no signs of slowing down. He speaks in animated bursts of Franglais, telling me about installations in progress in Oshawa, at Trent University, and another for the Domaine Forget Festival in Charlevoix. Fournelle also has a relationship with Jean-Michel Correia, the director of JMC Art Contemporain on rue St. Paul.

I visit the gallery the following afternoon, and Correia gives me a tour of Fournelle’s pieces in his collection. “For me, he is at the top, top, top, of Quebec artists,” Correia explains. “Like Richard Serra. Bigger than Richard Serra.”

Along with Serra’s sculptures, the music of Gavin Bryars and Philip Glass and the works of Guido Molinari and Marcelle Ferron continue to provide inspiration for Fournelle. Regardless of age, a current of sizzling-hot resistance has always distinguished Fournelle’s artistic practice.

“I was in Paris with Marcelle Ferron in 1968,” Fournelle reminisces. “I was touring some pieces of stone in Europe. And that summer at the Biennale at Venice, we met Takis. And we spent a couple of days drinking together.”

But officials covered Takis’s sculptures with white sheets, apparently, because the artist was in opposition to the Biennale.

“In ‘68,” Fournelle explains, “you had to be against everything.”◼︎

_{Cover image: From Fluides, 2003, Rimouski, Quebec.}

Corrections: An earlier version of this article stated that Mr. Fournelle is 85. He is 84. Lines of Fire was presented in 1999, not 1997.