essential
The 11th Travel Book exhibition is held from May 5 to 11 at the Maison des consuls in Saint-Céré. It brings together carnettists. Meeting with one of them, Olivia Marcus.
It is found in the variegated crowds, where people are together, active, like Olivia, an artist “on the spot”. Olivia Marcus is one of the carnettists exhibited at the Maison des consuls for the 11th travel diary organized by the commonplace, in Saint-Céré, in the Lot.
The Urban Sketcheurs movement
“My main theme is to draw people, characters and, very often in urban areas, in bistros, places where there are a lot of people,” explains the cruncher Olivia Marcus. His carnetist approach is part of what founds the Urban Sketcheurs, a movement born in Seattle fifteen years ago: promote the sketch on the heart of the urban scenes, as a kind of testimony of what we see when we see, “an snapshot as long as we live, and which we then share together and online”.
And last year’s national meeting was in Nantes. “We wanted to make a night drawing and explore drawing techniques, so with a friend we landed in a corner and we spent the evening, she in watercolor and I gouache. We spend our time drawing finally. It is both an energy, an irrepressible need … There is a part of maniaries too, I need to collect people, these instantaneous drawing.
She participates in “sketchomaton”
Olivia also collects projects around people, such as “sketchomaton”, where people are crunched in 3 minutes: “It is a device that we run in cafes and businesses, we have thousands of portraits”. And she participates in another project, “Le Bain de Foule” (with Luc Périllat and Amélie Demange): “We leave for a whole day only draw people. In the end they are together without being together and we bring them together on paper”.
Olivia traces the main lines of her style: “I am very interested in color, composition, I like to explore. It’s a bit of a territory the notebooks. I mix colored pencils, gouaches, markers, watercolors, acrylics, markers …” She is also a graphic designer. And run workshops in Toulouse and elsewhere. In Poland this year, and in Compostela, in the fall, as in Saint-Céré. “It’s a work of transmission, it’s great because it is accessible to everyone, you just need a few pencils, paper, knowing how to look. And that’s it!”
