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Aimee Belanger

Interview by L. Valena

Can you first tell me what you responded to?

I responded to a video of a person singing a clip of an original song. There was guitar and vocals, it was really nice.

What was your first reaction to that?

At first I was surprised that my prompt was music. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but being a visual artist, I was not expecting that. I was really impressed that someone wrote a song! It was pretty awesome.

What happened next?

I watched the video a bunch of times. I was kind of thinking about what angle I wanted to take. Did I want it to be a literal interpretation? Did I want to illustrate the lyrics? Did I want to look at the visuals in the video and get inspiration from that? So I listened to it a bunch of times, sort of over the course of a week.

I listened to it without watching it, and vice versa, just to figure out what was hitting me about it. I decided I was going to do a drawing- that’s kind of what I know best. I thought about maybe doing something with the music, but it would have been too complicated to pull off in the allotted time. So I decided I would stick with a medium that I know. Some of the lyrics were sitting in my head, but I mostly responded to the feel of the song.

And how would you describe that? If you can put it into words.

It was really kind of sweet sounding. The vocalist was kind of looking into the camera. “Call it what you will/ call it a bitter pill/ I’ll call it love.” That was what was sticking in my head. This song about love, and the artist was standing in front of some sort of tree or bush so there was this greenery. I’m not sure what time of year it was recorded, but it just felt very warm and personal. Precious. It gave me a feeling of warmth and growth. It felt springy to me, so that’s what I was responding to.

How did you translate that?

I’ve been doing a lot of self-portraits during the quarantine that are kind of introspective and sad. I’ve been doing a lot of stuff about feeling like I’m in hibernation. A lot of stuff where my face is covered, or I’m overgrown with moss and fungus and vines. I just feel like I’ve been dormant for so long.

This kind of felt like growing, but in a more springy positive way. I was thinking of the idea of something blooming from the inside, and sort of coming out. I wanted the drawing to be about feeling that wave of warmth coming over my body while listening to that song. So I kind of wanted to go in the same vein I’ve already been working in, but hopefully come up with a brighter feel to it than what my work has been recently.

Has animation been part of this body of work that you’ve been making?

No! Not at all! Never!

Oh my god, this is your first animation?!

Yeah.

HOLY SHIT!

I was thinking about it, and I started doing a drawing, but it looked really stiff— it was kind of reading a lot like my other drawings, which I think have this weight to them. So I was thinking, “how do I make it feel light and airy, and like it’s growing or blossoming?” And I thought, “I bet I could figure out how to animate this.”

I don’t know how to do anything the easy way. I have photoshop, so I figured out how to make a gif in photoshop. I literally just drew it by hand, and scanned it on a flat scanner. I would draw a little more, and scan it again. Then I took all of the images... I know you can do this digitally, I know there are apps, but I don’t have any of those. So I did it in my old school, Millennial, art school way, which was to scan it and put it into photoshop.

There are parts where it’s choppy, like there’s one part that’s missing a frame, and I just had to let it go. So I’m feeling really excited and grateful, and hoping to find a more efficient way to do it in the future. But, I basically just spent an afternoon drawing and scanning. I drew it on a piece of computer paper, so it could go through the scanner! I had to do a few versions of the drawing before I realized I needed to do it on computer paper.

I think the gif has so many exciting possibilities.

Yeah! And again, photoshop is absolutely the worst way to do it. Why would you use this incredibly complex software? There are apps that do just this one thing, and do it well, and photoshop is the most convoluted way. But I did what I did using what I knew how to do.

When you look at it now, what does it say to you?

I think I want to work in this mode more. I really liked that it was sort of documenting my drawing, step by step, but it was also unforgiving. The way I was doing it, I could have gone through and edited the drawing itself after the fact, but really I was just making it and documenting it step by step, without being able to change anything. I think that led me to be a little bit looser with it.

A lot of my drawings are tight and detailed, so I’m thinking about how to incorporate more movement into things- whether it be literal movement or in the way I approach the drawing.

It felt really nice to feel like I was connecting to another artist, and then wondering what they would think of my response to them.

Do you have any advice for another artist approaching this project for the first time?

It’s super fun. I was a little bit stressed out about the time limit, and I love that you gave a reason for the time limit. I had to really hold that true. When it was like, “let us know when you’re ready,” I had just bought a house. So it was right in the middle of moving, but I decided to just say “I’m ready now.” I wanted to make something during that moment, and not put it off or forget about it. I was excited to have a minute to think about making something that was sort of outside of my house and my own brain. Everything has been feeling so closed off, that it felt like a really nice opportunity to connect with artists. I think people should do it.

That’s so cool that you made this while you were entering this new phase of your life! That gives a whole new layer of meaning to this, it’s really special.

I don’t think I would have done anything like this if I hadn’t participated in this project, and I hadn’t had the prompt that I had.

Call Number: Y42MU | Y47FI.beSpri

Aimee Belanger is a Boston-based illustrator, ceramicist, and art educator. She is interested in botanical and anatomical illustration, mystical symbolism, and discussing the cultural impact of memes with her brilliant and hilarious high school students. She is a resident artist at The Clay School in Lynn and the humble servant to an 11 pound tabby cat named Molly.