Artist Sophie Jodoin was kind enough to answer a few of my questions about her art. (You may remember her from July’s Trivia Question). Here are some excerpts from the interview:
1. What initially inspired you to draw this subject matter (gas masks, etc)?
2. Do you have photographs that you work from or is this all from your imagination?
I started working on the gas masks series very naturally following up on previous other war sub-series. Each of them comes in a very fluid way as I am working. They all connect in terms of subjects, materials and process.
I felt the need to use the head for at least one of the war series but did not feel like using or portraying mutilated heads and turned instead towards headgears pertaining to war. At the beginning I had no intention on revealing human features. I started up drawing medieval helmets from photographs I took form the medieval collection at the Met in NY. After doing a dozen of these I felt I was simply doing a “catalog” of beautiful historical objects and decided to move forward in time and found a great website of a huge gas masks collection. I printed a lot of them and started working, at first, leaving the eye sockets empty. Eventually, the need to enter some kind of humanity was too great and I started incorporating human features not caring if these heads became hybrids of human heads and masks.
As I mentioned on my website I was interested in showing both victims and perpetrators through a simple gaze. I guess it is always for me a question of building a large body of works overtime (this one took me a year and a half) and keep the interest going without bifurcating too much from the initial spark. The human heads/features are done from lots of photographs I have taken overtime of models I have worked with. The war series (with all its sub-series) is the first one where I do not work directly form the model but rather from internet and magazine sources. I personally prefer the freedom this gives me.
I will be showing the gas masks series … in Maritimes, Canada. The finished series contains 80 framed drawings (all black frames with denglass) and a large video projection I produced with my boyfriend [David Jhave Johnston]. I am excited as it will be the first time I will be showing it and will be learning a great deal from this experience and the reaction of the audience.
Many thanks to Sophie for taking the time to answer my questions in such detail.
P.S. I also found a great video interview, for those of you who speak French. C’est très bien.
