Noemi Schipfer

Posted by Fabio 2 June 2011

Noemi Schipfer graduated from the graphic design highschool Estienne in Paris. As an illustrator she published her first children’s book last january and the second one will be release in the end of august. She also make illustration for magazine and book covers, and she experiment with video too, she directed her first feature length last summer. We caught up with Noemi to find out more about her work.

Where do you live?
Paris.

Does your surroundings influence your type of work?
yes of course my surroundings influence my type of work. Particularly people. For a long time I was scared of people and my double culture gave me language gaps. Drawing was the easyer and universal way to “talk”. But it was in highschool that I really realized I was drawing for people, mostly close people. I was really scared about judgment and drawing was a way to sublimate and make abstract what it was hard to say with words. It was also in a certain way, a way to impress people in reaction to my problems coming to terms with myself. Boys I’ve been in love with were the principal target. When I was 17, I was in love with a boy 11 years my senior and who had a girlfriend for a while. And she was an illustrator. I think that this rivalry both in love and in art heightens the ability of my drawing to captivate. Today is the same, the person I love influence me a lot because like every artist you don’t make art just for you, there is a constant search for recognition. Also working on narrative project, an autobiographical part is hard to separate totally. It keeps track of feelings you don’t want to forget their intensity. For example, I wrote “The sadness Drinker” just after my first love’s break-up. And with no deal, dominated fatality of this story comes from this event. In this movie, I use two invisible notions which are feelings and Time to make two mains characters, the Sadness Drinker and the Photographer. The story is about the confrontation of this two figures and the consequences of their meeting.

How would you describe your work in 3 words?
Showing the concept through esthetic aspects is what I find interesting in art. I think that artwork is between the Beauty and the Idea. For example, in my first children book edited on january, narration is lead by the graphic concept. Pictures are completely made by horizontal and vertical lines, and elements appear like silhouette. Images are composed in bidimensions’s constraint, and so, superposition becomes disappearance. In the book, the little ugly duckling is composed with horizontal lines in opposition to his brothers and sisters composed with vertical lines. And he plays hide and seek with his difference all along the book for the best and the worst. The second book “le Garcon”, out next september, also try to merge visual characteristic to narration.

What general emotions do you call on when you create your work?
Anticipation to see the result. It depends.

What do you do to switch off?
It’s hard do say that you switch off. I think that in creation, we can’t control breaks, it happens when it happens. It’s like we never stop to
think. Just, sometimes life gains the upper hand and you have doubt about what you’re doing, and what you really want to do, and maybe in this time you have a sort of break. I am at a point of my life where it’s hard to have the control because everything goes faster that you would like it to. So I never have the sensation to switch off.

Who would your ultimate collaboration be with, from any field you choose, and why?
Architecture is an art that I discovered late in my life but really excited me. Scale of a project is soo big that its conception becomes reflection. I think the way to think of an architect is near that an artist’s one, inspite of its significant technical problems. It takes a long time to make a piece and you have to put it in a context. And inside the piece, you have to think the transition between unit to details. This complexity fascinated me and the ultimate collaboration would be with an architect.

Tell us something no one else knows about you?
no.

What did you struggle with the most when you were starting up?
Time. I plan more that I can do. But when I can it is very satisfying. So maybe it’s just a struggle with myself. Fear of missing the deadline. I’m scared about loosing Time or not using it in the best way. Since two years I work by myself and sometimes I focus on details or ideas that doesn’t make sence. But realize after I finish it. It’s really easy to loose sence when your are alone. Last year I lost myself. For a few months I was only working on personal projects for Fines Arts School’s competitive examination. My relation with my work became totally exclusive that I developped tolerance’s syndrome. More I did more I needed to do. It was the same time I began to be interested in pure conceptual art, neglecting totally drawing. The theme which haunted me was Time and its complex. I maybe made about twenty different projects around this notion, try to perform this invisibility to visible. With hindsight it just looks like a repetitive obsessional artwork, with maybe two or three exceptions. Refusal puted an end to that period where I thought too much that I was an “artist”. I struggle with liberty limits. However, this period let a big evolution in my style of drawing. Completely detached of figurative for a moment, I’ve became attach to simplicity and efficiency of primary shape. I developped my work with lines and I opened up to new mediums of expression like video.

Do you think its possible to retain your artistic integrety and be a commercially successful?
I hope so one day.

Do you ever get stuck for inspiration?
I think it’s not a problem of inspiration but concentration.

What are your top 3 favorite places in your city?
My room, Pompidou Center and the bank on the opposite to Orsay’s museum (place where the sadness drinker met the Photographer in the movies )

What are some of your goals for 2011?
To keep on growing as an artist and change my actual lifestyle.

Can you talk about any current or future projects that you are particularly excited about?
I would like to make an other average length this summer in Tokyo. But I can’t tell you more at now.

What is your favorite time of the day?
noon.

www.cargocollective.com/noemischipfer