Sara Fanelli

Sara Fanelli

You have such a Fanelli signature, even when you jump from children to non-children’s media. Is there a method or manner you would like to try that will totally alter your signature? Have you tried it? Is it yet to come? I hope that I will always arrive at new ways of making images. I have been making a few more three-dimensional pieces and I have begun to play with photography techniques, too. Let’s see! I can’t wait. But when you sit down to make art, what do you want to come out of it? And are you sure at the outset what it is that will come out? I definitely love the element of accident and surprise which is a gift of the process of making images, especially in a relatively old fashioned technique like collage. Cutting the wrong shape; spilling the ink; covering mistakes. However I do plan a general composition, so that I have a guide for the happy mistakes. In fact, playfulness in the work (as in life!) is so important that if there wasn’t an element of it with its surprises, I wouldn’t enjoy making pictures as much as I do. If you were to step out of Sara Fanelli and describe who you are as an artist, would you describe yourself as a children’s book illustrator? Just an illustrator? I think I would describe myself as an illustrator. But in the context of contemporary illustration which gives personal interpretations and visual comments to texts rather than merely literal descriptions. ◆◆

http://www.hellerbooks.com/pdfs/varoom_03.pdf