Sarah
Martinon
Interview (2021)
Interview (2021)
Please tell us about your background, including the cultures and individuals who have influenced you as you are today.I was born in Dijon in 1986, and spent my childhood here and there. Summers were spent at a pond inventing explorer’s stories and sleeping in a caravan from the seventies, in the family house, or in the woods by the ocean playing board games. [I would also] steal pocketbooks and club books from my grandfather’s library, choosing them by their covers. I first read over and over illustrated albums by Tomi Ungerer, Barbapapa, and the whole Harlin Quist collection. Later, I read la Comtesse de Ségur, then Lewis Carroll, Chairs de Poule, Maupassant, Poe, Lovecraft, Van Vogt, K. Dick, Ballard. I’ve always had poor concentration, and while reading or drawing, I was always letting my mind wander inside the flowery wallpapers, curtains and bedspreads, inventing stories within the stories. Since then, I’ve felt that I need to be surrounded by these things all the time, which explains my obsession with creating immersive effects. Today, I try to get people to enter my memories and imaginary world.
I remember designing a snail-shaped plan to divide my 12㎡ childhood bedroom in to seven smaller rooms. Each one had its own attributes and decorations. One to read my books. One to sleep in. One to watch Il était une fois la vie, the Wizard of Oz, Fantasia, the Little Mermaid, Alice in Wonderland, and Fantastic Voyage on repeat. One to listen to my teenage obsessions like Blur, Pulp, The Cure, The B 52’s, ESG. One to draw in. One to dress like a Biba girl, and one to write horror stories and my journal. In reality, my bedroom walls were covered with my very own copies of Klimt and Bauhaus paintings I made at the painting workshop on Wednesday afternoons, my copies of William Morris, Barbara Hulanicki, Bernard Nevill’s patterns, pages torn from magazines, pieces of aluminium foil and survival blankets, a lava lamp, and quotes from my favorite songs. I also dressed in clothes that looked like they were cut from upholstery fabric, pretending they were Ossie Clarke, Prada shoes and Bonnie Cashin coats. I was a chameleon blending in with the room, but it was just the opposite effect when I walked down the street to go to high school. I felt like bending reality to suit my vision.
What inspired your interest in graphic design, and could you tell us about the course of events that led to your aspiration to be a graphic designer?I’ve been drawing for as long as I can remember, and I aimed to design objects in the first place. I turned to graphic design because I have always been a very impatient girl. Indeed, I thought working in 2D would offer much more instantaneousness and freedom, with less pressure from the process and construction, an idea that seems so naive now. I also imagined that I could lay down the many ideas I had with much more immediacy and could avoid the risk of losing one on the edge. I never saw myself as an artist strictly speaking. Trying to get people to hang my drawings on their wall or expose them in a gallery felt very frightening. I identified myself much more with the applied arts. As a matter of fact, I built a strong bond to commissioned work very quickly. At that time, I was doing mostly graphic design projects, but I missed drawing constantly. Eventually, little by little, I managed to infuse more drawings in my professional work. I suggested that my drawings could be part of the visual identities I was already designing: fabrics for fashion brands, wallpaper and decor for architects, even patterns for illustrated books when the iconography was not enough, and it felt right to do so. I finally did reach the stage where I was designing the immersive universes that I intended to from the very beginning. Now, I can invade spaces from floor to ceiling, my drawings can spread everywhere, becoming the setting for something else. I would say I’d rather be the box than the jewel.