Every piece of Vivi-Mari's work is symbolic and spiritual, it tells stories and with them reaches new transcendental depths in this medium. Her work plays on the little eccentricities all collage artists are fond of.
Name (Real or Screename): Vivi-Mari Carpelan
URL (Blog, Website): http://www.flickr.com/photos/vivi-mari/
Location (Where are you from?): Finland
Q: Describe your work in 10 words or less.
A: Symbolic collages and mixed media, usually on paper.
Q: What do you like to work with (magazines, photographs, vintage)? Be specific!
A: I love using old vintage copyright free images, and have a great collection of books collected over the years, that I have copied or scanned. I love the old fashioned feel, but also the extreme technical skills these drawings display. Many of them are also very quirky and odd from our modern point of view. They make the perfect starting point! Often I just go through my images and pick out whatever feels right at the moment. I don't like using magazines due to copyright issues that are hard to get around, plus the paper is a bit thin and can create an effect that is not so neat (it wrinkles or the edge of other pictures show through). I also use scraps as well as my own photogrpaphs or other old photos that I have the right to use. In the future I hope to use my own photos more, but at the moment I don't have a good color printer.
Q: How long have you been creating collages and what made you start?
A: I started around 2003 when the fibromyalgia in my muscles made it too hard for me to draw as much as I used to. I try and incorporate some drawing still, though. I was actually doing découpage before this, and fell in love with all the possibilities. I learned a lot from all my books on découpage and so it was easy to transfer to collages on paper. I was a little ahead of time in both cases, I think, as nowadays there are tons of books on collages that weren't available in my country back then. As for the feeling of artistic satisfaction, I actually liked getting away from my own world of imagery and expand it to comprise that of other people. I see a deeper relationship between the words collage and collective... :-).
Q: Are you solely an artist, or do you work in another profession?
A: I have a lot of education behind me, both in the arts and academia. My real profession is scientist of religion but I am on disability, and so my main 'occupation' is art and writing.
Q: Do you have any formal art training?
A: I spent one year in England learning Interior Design and art history. Then I studied more art history at the university. After this I went to France and did one year of general art studies, one year of graphic design, and two years of illustration. When I returned home, (I never finished the course) I started doing my own artwork with a more serious intent than before. That was in the early '90s.
Q: Explain your favourite techniques.
A: I love mixing techniques, as this provides with variety. Ok, some of the ideas that make my pieces unique to me I want to keep as my professional secrets :-). I love using different crayons, mostly watercolor pencils or insoluble ones. I also love the inks called 'Ecoline'. They are very deep and intense. All in all I like the black lines of the vintage images, they are very striking. I tend to stick to earth tones, as they are easy to mix and match, but sometimes I go wild with color too. In that case I try and find old images from books or scraps so I don't have to bother with coloring everything in myself... At the moment I try and avoid making it all into too much of a laborious business, as it should be fun and not tiring!
Q: Describe your favourite piece ever created.
A: I don't think I have a favorite piece... I do love all my collages, they are in some paradoxical sense more personal for me than the drawings I made and sold in the '90s. They are all tied together under the theme of 'DESTINY'. I guess the latest one is always the favorite one. It started off with an image from about 1900 of Siamese twins. I felt I just had to use it. Some may find it macabre, but to me it was peaceful and neutral, as well as quite beautiful despite the deformity. I then realized it was depicting an inner feeling of division that I've always carried with me, ever since I was small. I am not talking of anything pathological of course, as we are dealing with symbolism here. I also have been traumatized with the deformity of my own spine, so it connects to that. The piece shows a transcendence from this sense of division, to greater integrity of the self. I call the piece Me, Myself and I, which is meant to be slightly ironic of our sense of self as well. I suppose it's a piece that is hard for others to grasp, though it's unusually simple. I am also fond of House of Cards, another new piece that is in contrast smacked with details.
Q: What other artists do you admire?
A: I love the elegant but 'patchy' aesthetics of Gustav Klimt, the mysterious and desolate atmosphere and intense colors of Giorgio de Chirico, the symbolic introspective ideas of Frida Kahlo, the esoteric thinking of the Swedish Hilma af Klint, and the beautifully decorative but slightly naive images of the medieval times and the early renaissance. I also admire a lot of the art created in Finland during the so-called 'Golden Age' of Finnish National Romanticism, which is usually packed with symbolism. I also admire other contemporary collage artists but can't think of any specific names.
Thanks Vivi-Mari!