julia pott tells beautiful stories about love and friendship. for that purpose she employs awkward animated characters which act out her inner confusions. we picked out the main themes of julia´s work and got enchanted by her words about these.
UNIVERSE
it's the sci-fi nature of it all that gets me. it's also very sparkly, and being prone to enjoy sparkly things, the universe has great appeal to me. growing up, "eerie indiana", "are you afraid of the dark" and "the x files" were the big three on my television set.
i wrote "the truth is out there" on every ring binder I could get my hands on and I revelled in the mystery of it all. now when I come back to the universe in my work I do it with a certain nostalgia. by engaging with the universe I can tap into my feelings about space and science fiction and the spooky that I had as a child. I take comfort in feeling so small in such a big space.
I think people go either way on it, sometimes wondering what the point is if you're so insignificant. personally I think it's a good thing. In the grand scheme of things you are most likely slipping under the radar, and with this in mind all that becomes important is making the most of the time you have.
Bat For Lashes visuals from
Treat on
Vimeo.
LOVE
love is my bread and butter. it is almost exclusively my default subject matter for my work, whether it be romantic or otherwise. in my own love life I am a bit confused, which might account for all the soul searching in my work. it helps me figure out what is going on in my mixed up brain. in my drawings, animals become the clumsy manifestations of ourselves, fumbling their way through frustrating situations.
OBSESSIONS
I find obsession in various places. I do not have a lot of vices – not a big drinker, never smoked etc. and only recently got into coffeine. but I do have a tendency to lock into something and keep coming back to it until I have it out of my system. I do it in every aspect of my life – there will be a month when i eat the same three meals every day because i cannot get enough, and my clothes become like uniforms – wearing a rotation of the same three outfits for a few months until I never want to see them again.
my obsessions in my every day life and my work life are more often than not very interlinked. my characters will dress in the clothes that are currently in rotation in my closet, their interests will be my own obsessions. but I suppose that is probably true of most artists. at the moment I am really into the 90s in all aspects – film, fashion, culture. I have been getting back in touch with my childhood for my new film so I think that has resulted in an immersion in the 90s again. I find myself mainly wearing dungarees, shark tooth necklaces and no fear t-shirts and watching the goonies and stand by me on repeat.
in my work, my obsessions usually end like a bad break up, or two friends that have grown apart. you spend so much time mulling over the same idea again and again and taking it as far as it can go that when a project is finished you never want to see that subject again. you are no longer friends. there are a few occasions when I don't feel the previous project has gotten a subject out of my system and it lingers in the back of my brain every time I start something new.
personally I think obsession is a great thing. it is when I go through phases of being unexcited by things that my work suffers. I force something upon it that isn't there and it shows. when I am obsessed my work thrives because I cannot stop working as I am trying to get the obsession out of my system.
UNFULFILLED DREAMS
I have a tendency, as I'm sure many people do, to linger on the "what if's" in life rather than focusing on all the things you did do. I'll let them absorb me and get consumed in wondering what my life would be like if I'd done that instead – of course in my head this often results in an alternative reality where I am a famous film director living in some fancy beach house and I curse myself for making all those big mistakes.
when I first graduated from kingston in 2007 I was very very shy and would turn down interviews or jobs if it meant having to meet people or talk excessively on the phone. I was happy to just continue working on my own projects in the quiet of my own room with a big cup of tea. this period of time, therefore, has quite a few 'alternative reality' scenarios that I linger on. it taught me a lot however and I feel we learn from our mistakes much more than our achievements sometimes. I still have that shy kid inside me but I push through it because I know it's better to be brave and get out there, even if it means feeling a little uncomfortable, than miss out on a great opportunity.
my mom is a great exponent of the "everything happens for a reason" motto. even if it isn't true it's a great comfort. you can go through and justify every action, everything that went wrong and think "if that hadn't happened, i'd have never met this person or had this experience". I try to stay positive for the most part. it can become a bit difficult in an industry where your work is so much a part of who you are that when people don't like it it can send you into a bit of a downward spiral. if you get too many criticisms in a row you can find yourself mumbling in your head that maybe you should give it all up and become a florist. when this happens my dad has an even more comforting phrase that he says in a cold manner that makes it all the more effective, 'come on julia, it's just life'.
CHILDHOOD
I would say my childhood was pretty normal, I grew up in quite a small family with just one older sister, alice. I had a few quiet eccentricities like most kids do, one of which being that I used to pull out my hair and eat it – i could not get enough.
my mom is from new york and my dad is from london so we had the benefit of spending the year in london with my dad's family and then the whole summer going to the beach and havingbarbecue's with my mom's family.
I grew up in the countryside, in the same house we live in now. if we ever sold that house I think i'd be devastated. It's down a dirt track in the outskirts of london and I instantly feel my whole body relax when I go up to visit my folks there. there's something so homely about it, and according to friends who have come to visit me, it smells like root beer.
my first career aspiration as a child was to be a balloon. it seemed like a very feasible choice but as I got older I started to think about the ins and outs of becoming a balloon and I lost the ambition. after that I went straight on to wanting to be an animator and never really explored anything else. I would tell people I was going to work for Disney, although i'm not sure if I really knew what it meant at that time.
I was a nightmare child, right into my teenage years I was a brat, and a clumsy noisy one at that. my mom would call me 'a bull in a china shop' as I had a tendency to stomp through various rooms of the house demolishing things in my path. I was also apparently a biter. I don't bite much now, i'm far more well behaved. when I wasn't smashing things up I was big into drawing as a kid. my mom would get
my sister and I to draw our bad dreams as a way of getting them out of our system. we also wrote a children's book together every evening before bed about a scuba diving detective.
Extract from The Decemberists : Here Comes the Waves from
Julia Pott on
Vimeo.
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