Transcriber: Julieta Baccaro Reviewer: Carlo Schiatti
Oh, hello. Okay, so...
How many art directors does it take to change a light bulb?
I will tell you at the end,
you don't have to shout out an answer now.
So, I am a paper artist,
but I wasn't always a paper artist.
I have only been doing it for the last four years.
Before that, I had gone down a career
and a path that I knew already existed.
I was a creative in an advertising agency,
and I thought I was happy,
and then the recession hit,
and there was no work coming in,
so I thought, "Okay, let's see what's going on in the world"
and I was looking on blogs
and I could see a massive rise
in people making things with their hands.
And it took me back to a time when I was
little and really, really happy playing with paper.
So I thought, "Well, you know, if other people are doing it,
why don't I try and give it a go?"
I was living in Amsterdam at the time,
and I looked around and I thought, "The city is so beautiful,
so why don't I make something inspired by here?"
So I took a picture of one of the canal houses,
and I twisted it on Photoshop,
and thought, "Okay, this looks like a challenge,
if I can't make this, then I know I can't be a paper artist.
If I can make it, then maybe
I might be able to give it a go."
So I went to town with all the details,
and I cut out all the tiny bricks.
Some of these things are like 1 mm, which is a tenth of a cm,
and I have shaky hands, so I'd stubbed them with a scalpel,
and then shakily move them over to the glue
and then shakily move them over to the building.
But I was really proud of it,
and I sent it out to the big world wide web
and it got on some blogs
and I thought, okay, if other people are doing it,
and people think I'm doing an okay job,
maybe it's a route that I could possibly follow.
So I did something really scary,
and thought, "I am going to leave my advertising job,
go and get a job in a bar,
and try and make a short film."
So then came a wave of the unknown.
I didn't really know what I was doing,
no one else definitely knew what I was doing.
This is in my living room, by the way.
So I literally sat in my living room for months
trying to make this thing by myself.
And I'd sit there,
and I'd watch Hollywood films or Disney films
to fill myself with so much enthusiasm,
because everything has a happy ending in them.
(Laughter)
So I was like, if I just keep filling myself with this optimism,
it might be okay.
And I was watching Lord of the Rings,
and I was like "There's Gollum in his little cave."
And I realized if anyone had looked at me at that point
I looked like Gollum.
I wasn't moving, I just sat there doing this.
He had his ring, I had my paper, you know,
(Laughter)
we had a moment that was going on.
So like for a while I was just doing this,
and I was pushing myself so far,
until I pushed myself into a neck spasm,
and I woke up and I just could not move,
and I yelled out to my flatmate, and she carried me to the shower,
because I had someone coming round to take a picture for a magazine.
And so, she put me into the hot tub,
and it was just agonizing pain.
She was propping me up, and I was like,
"Someone is going to come and take a photo of me in an hour!
What am I going to do?"
So in my hand, under the desk, there was a hot water bottle,
so I sit there in the chair smiling,
looking really awkward,
which is what I am definitely doing,
and then he'd be like, "I'll take the picture now"
and then I'd put the hot water back, and then...
It was a long, a long period,
so I had to take a week off work.
But then I thought, "I have to keep going,"
so I found an ingenious solution
of putting a hot water bottle down my top
and it snood, and I was able to keep working
until the muscle pain went away.
At the time, I was living with another artist
and she had also moved out of her job to try and do her own art.
And she was sticking pins onto her face,
and I was making thousands of little flowers.
And we were like, "Our lives are so bizarre right now."
(Laughter)
But we were really really happy.
We were really happy in what we were doing.
So, this is my short movie.
I sent this off to production companies,
and I was like, "I have made this, you know, is there any work?
I would love to do things with my hands, I think I could do a good job of it,
but, you know, obviously, if there isn't any work... whatever."
So, I tried, and I kind of prayed,
and it's so scary that you have all this [unclear]
and this dream,
and then you release it and you're like,
"What if I was just totally dreaming...
and it's never going to happen for me?"
So, I just waited, after that moment
I was like, "Come on somebody!"
And a producer got in touch with me, and said
"We have a toilet paper commercial coming in."
To most people, that'd be like, "Lame"
(Laughter)
but I was so excited. (Laughter)
I had gone from just one person
to then being two people thinking, maybe we can do this.
And we pitched against people doing a CG world,
I was going to do it by hand, and because of all the natural floors
you make when you actually do it by hand, we won the job,
because it looked natural and sweet
and you could never predict it would look like that.
So I went from my living room to a warehouse in L.A.,
which was really cool,
and it was the first time I got given a group of people to work with.
So yeah, I was like, thank God
I put all that effort in in the first place,
to be by myself and really understand the material,
so then when I got given a team, I didn't know I could do it,
but because I didn't know what I was doing the first time around
I thought, "Maybe I can probably get through not knowing
the second time around."
(Laughter)
But it was fine, it worked out really well.
And from there I did get another toilet paper commercial,
so I kind of got even more niche
than what I was aiming on doing in the first place.
(Laughter)
But, thankfully, more toilet paper things did not come.
I've worked on other things, for cars,
which is a step up from toilet paper, I suppose.
(Laughter)
But that was again for a bigger team, and a bigger group of people,
and they were like, "Can you make this?"
They wanted the cars to look really sleek,
but still crafted, but really sleek,
And I was like, "Yeah, I could definitely do that."
(Laughter)
Trying to work out what to do.
And then from that job I learned how to animate
because I got to be around animators, so when someone said,
"Can you work an animation for us?"
and I was like, "Yeah, I can do that."
And so then I made another animation.
But, in between these pay jobs,
— it wasn't just like... and I was like, "Oh, this is the life!" —
in between every job comes like a big lull,
and a big like, "Is this ever going to happen again?"
"Am I still just living in my childish dream?"
So I have got to still keep doing my own art work,
and my own ideas,
and kind of coming up with new concepts that people haven't seen before.
Like, with this.
I loved the idea that music notes come out but then, where do they go?
Well, I don't know, land on the floor.
(Laughter)
Or I challenged maybe working with paper.
(Laughter)
That's sandpaper.
I thought maybe I could work with sandpaper,
it has got "paper" in the title,
definitely going to work like paper.
It did not work like paper.
It was like trying to use plastic.
That was the first project I nearly gave up on.
And then I thought, "Wow, if I give up on that,
that means that, you know,
I've dunk into that habit of
"Ah, if things just get a little bit too difficult,
then I'll give up on it."
So I spent ages, like scraping all the things off my nail,
and it was like [unclear] paper,
but then, I still pushed through,
and I still got something I was really happy with.
So, I'm going to say the question again.
How many art directors does it take to change a light bulb?
And the answer is...
Does it have to be a light bulb?
(Laughter)
So, it's this idea of just being curious
and being able to ask questions.
I don't know where my life is going really,
but that kind of feels quite good for me,
I have come to accept that everything is not black or white.
When I tried to got black or white,
or go down a route that I thought
that I really wanted to go down
and people were happy with
my answer of, "I am in advertising," "Oh, yeah, that is great,"
whereas now I am like, "I'm a paper artist,"
and people are like, "Can you make a living? Are you fine?
Do you need me to give you money?"
I'm like, "No, I am still okay."
And, you know, I like that,
I like the fact that with the Internet
we can just put ideas out there and not know where it is going to go
and I think not knowing is actually
a good enough answer for myself.
So, there you go.
(Applause)