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The QA: Giselle Potter

By Peggy Roalf   Monday July 27, 2015

Q: Originally from Connecticut, what are some of your favorite things about living and working in Ulster County, New York?

A: I grew up in Stonington CT, right on the border of Rhode Island but I traveled a lot with my parents’ puppet troupe through Europe. Now I live in Rosendale NY, which I love. It is small and cuckoo in a good way.

Q: Do you keep a sketchbook? What is the balance between the art you create on paper versus in the computer?

A: I haven’t been keeping sketchbooks lately, I mostly sketch on whatever paper is handy but I would like to remember to have a book with me more. I only work on paper. I scan my pictures to send them but I don’t know how to create anything on the computer.

Q: What is the most important item in your studio?

A: Paper, ink, pencils and erasers (that always disappear.) I can’t choose just one of those things.



Q: What do you like best about your workspace?

A: I love my studio. We built it on our property when I had my first daughter because it got harder to work in our house. It is the perfect size for me with views of our field. Mostly I love that is my very own space just far enough from our house to feel separate and undistracted by home life (but I could still hear screams if anyone needed me.)

Q: Do you think it needs improvement, if so, what would you change?

A: Not really but it is a little annoying that groundhogs live under it and there is the constant noise of them moving wood or something. One time I caught baby groundhogs chewing at my door. I tried to shoo them away but they just stayed, peeking at me through my French door windows.

Q: How do you know when the art is finished?

A: The art I like the best comes out quickly and easily. When I fester, fix and rework something, it usually gets worse and worse, so I try to stop as soon as I can.

 


Q: What makes you happy?

A: Being present and undistracted with my family.

Q: What was your favorite book as a child?

A: Babar and Zephyr. My grandmother had a big, old, copy in French; she would read to me and I loved the pictures of Zephyr’s monkey village so much.

Q: What is the best book you’ve recently read?

I haven’t been a good reader lately but when I recently reread A Good Man Is Hard to Find by Flannery O’Connor I was blown away by her writing even a second time.

Q: If you had to choose one medium to work in for an entire year, eliminating all others, what medium would you choose?

A: Dr.Ph Martin inks. I go back and forth between them and gouache. The inks can be frustratingly unforgiving but I get bored more quickly of the consistency of gouache.

Q: If you could time travel to any era, any place, where would you go?

A: I would like to visit a 1940’s fancy cocktail lounge, a Moroccan café and an Indian Palace, but not long enough to feel the problems with those places or times.



 

Q: What is preoccupying you at the moment?

A: In the summer, I always have the challenge of balancing working in my studio with enjoying time with my kids. I feel them getting older so fast and I want to appreciate them as much as I can without loosing touch with my work.

Q: What are some of your favorite places/books/blogs/websites for inspiration?

A: The Met[tropolitan Museum of Art]. I have a lot of books that I love of Indian miniatures and mythological art, books of plants, animals, birds, sea creatures and mushrooms but it is so inspiring to go the Met and think you are going to see one thing and end up staring a beautiful piece of a Roman wall or a tiny Persian bowl you didn’t expect to see at all.

Q: What was the [Thunderbolt] painting or drawing or film or otherwise that most affected your approach to art? 

A: Growing up with parents that fused art and life so much, watching my grandfather go to his studio every day and paint like it was his job, and having a grandmother that had a extensive collection of art books, it would have been more of a big decision to not be an artist than to be one.  



 

Q: What advice would you give a young artist about applying to an art school or college?

A: I  don’t know about applying but my advice if you do go to art school and/or become a professional artist, is to find your own identity, inspiration and playfulness within the structure and assignments that are given to you.

Q: What would be your last supper?

A: If I knew it was my last supper I wouldn’t have any appetite and I would just cry. But my favorite meal would be lots of very small bowls with different surprising tastes and sauces in each one, first savory and then sweet, and exciting drinks to go with it, and then delicious strong espresso and a little bit of dark salty chocolate.

My parents and grandparents were all artists so it’s not surprising that I became one too. I spent a lot of time in my grandfather’s studio, where he let me add to his abstract paintings and music. When I was three, my parents started a puppet theater company called “The Mystic Paper Beasts” and my sister and I traveled and performed with them through out the United States and Europe. My drawings and illustrated journals from my travel and experiences  with the Beasts inspire me  still and led to the children's books The Year I Didn’t Go To School and Chloe’s Birthday..and me

 

I graduated from Rhode Island School of Design in 1994 and spent my last year in Rome with RISD’s European Honors Program. Chronicle Books then published Lucy’s Eyes and Margaret’s Dragon; Lives of the Virgin Saints, a book of saint paintings and stories I made while I was in Rome.

After moving to Brooklyn, I got my first freelance illustration job with the New Yorker. My New Yorker illustrations inspired a lucky chain of work with many magazines and children’s books.

My first children’s book, Mr. Semolina-Semolinus; a Greek Folk Tale, was published in 1997, and I have illustrated over twenty-five more books since then. I have illustrated stories by such authors as Toni Morrison, Mary Pope Osborne, novelist Urula Hegi, poet Mathea Harvey and most recently Gertrude Stein.

I have also done advertisement work for Budget, National Geographic, Mass Mutual, Kirin Beer and between 2001-2, I did over twenty print and animated ads for Persil, the British laundry soap.

My pictures have been awarded frequently at the Society of Illustrators in New York and Los Angeles, 3x3 illustration annuals, and American illustration annuals. My work has also been shown at the Katonah Museum, the Eric Carle Museum, Storyopolis in LA, Roos Arts in Rosendale NY, Kingston Museum of Contemporary Art in Kingston NY, and Carrie Haddad in Hudson NY

I live with my husband and two daughters in the Hudson Valley.—Giselle Potter


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