Caitlin Hackett

One of our visits in New York was to see illustrator Caitlin Hackett in her apartment. A small group of us squeezed in, while she showed us some of her work displayed around her apartment, and some pieces of work in progress in her studio room.
Her drawings are ambitious and highly detailed...and so impressive! Her subject matter is quite dark, focusing mostly around mythical creatures. It seems ideally suited to epic fantasy stories; and in fact she did share with us some of her original drawings for a story book she was commissioned for.
Caitlin usually works using biro and watercolour. As we could see from a piece of her unfinished work on the wall, she sketches out the image in in pencil, then goes over it in pain-staking detail in biro. Although time consuming, the end results are stunning.

However, she explained frankly to us how her traditional method of image making was hard work when she was asked to change details of her illustrations for the story book. Rather than using some sort of high-tech solution to make quick alterations (as more digitally dependent artists may be able to), she had to completely re-do the drawing.

I thought it was interesting to see that, like André da Loba's studio, Caitlin's apartment and her studio room seemed to reflect her style of art work. The space was very neat and orderly, like the precise and clean look of her drawings, rather than the chaotic and overwhelming environment André worked in (which I thought corresponded nicely with his prolific nature and spontaneous ideas). She also had a beautiful cat that followed her around and observed as she showed us her studio!

Although the drawings were obviously the main focus of her talents, I was fascinated by some little puppets she had made.

Although these were more of a fun side-project for Caitlin, they have so much character and are so skillfully made! I don't know if it's just that I'm naturally inclined to admire 3d art work, but (I hesitate to say) I think I was drawn to these even more than the drawings. Rather than being a complete departure from her usual work, the detail painted on them is clearly in the same intricate style as her drawings. This visible link between her 2d and 3d creations is something I need to think about establishing in my own work, so I found these inspiring for that reason too.

André da Loba

Our first class visit in New York was to see André da Loba at the shared studio building The Invisible Dog in Brooklyn. 

We started by viewing the exhibition Shaboygen by Steven and William Ladd, which covered the bottom floor of the building. 

These strange bead trees were my favourite feature in the room. Unlike some of the other pieces, which just looked like boxes of trinkets or decorative fabric arrangements, these had more mystery about them...perhaps more of a story to tell. I wonder why the artists chose to make these tree shapes out of the beads; were they portraying a particular scene or environment? Their formation interests the viewer and you subconsciously try and attach more of a story/purpose to them. 

...followed by a lift up to the studio floor (a huge lift like none other I've ever been in!)...

...and slowly the entire group took turns to cram into André da Loba's studio, where he let us take pictures and be nosey in general...

These little men were some of my favourite things in the studio- they remind me of a papier mache wise man my dad made at school when he was little.

I could have stayed for hours in this room! It seemed like a real-life tour of André's imagination. There was so much work to see, so many creations and characters, different ideas everywhere you looked!

 ...Afterwards we went up to the next floor where there was another exhibition and we all got to rest our legs a little while as André gave us a performance displaying his work. We went away feeling very inspired!

Here is a video performance of his, Zeitgeist, that includes some of the same pieces.

I made some notes at the time:

That was a great first day!