It’s all there: the carriage entrance, the slightly worn sign, the flowerpot in the windows, the graffiti on the metal front, the Pizza Express menu, the unevenness of the sidewalks… This fragment of an avenue in Saint-Ouen, in Seine-Saint-Denis, looks just like the real thing. But it’s smaller than a doll’s house. “Even the stickers on mailboxes that are a few millimeters thick are faithful reproductions. To get there, you have to be a bit obsessive,” jokes Nicolas Pierre, the author of this world about twenty centimeters high.
The model artist used his favorite scale here: 1/87, or 87 centimeters of reality condensed into a single centimeter. These few facades, now destroyed in favor of a real estate transaction, were his first model, five years ago. Since then, this 38-year-old self-taught artist who attended a graphic arts high school has never stopped reproducing universes with meticulous realism. To the point of making it his profession. “I have always drawn the city, with a very realistic side, then I wanted to push things further: to add volume and enter into the material. I am lucky to make a living from it today,” says Nicolas Pierre, in the room of his apartment that serves as his workshop, a stone’s throw from the Saint-Ouen flea market. He creates models on demand for individuals or companies and has just completed an order for Hermès, his first foray into the luxury sector.
His personal playground: the urban fabric of north-eastern Paris, from the 18the district to the near suburbs. “Barbès, Belleville, La Chapelle, Seine-Saint-Denis… My models pay homage to these working-class neighborhoods, without hiding their sometimes decrepit side: the graffiti, the posters that never come off, the PMU bar, the night grocery stores, the storefronts that overlap… These are places that mutate, disappear, see their population change, and to which I give back a little of their history,” explains this native of Saint-Ouen who is working on a series of replicas dedicated to the emblematic places of Parisian hip-hop, record stores and concert halls.
His desk looks like a child’s after a rainy day: felt-tip pens, scissors, glue sticks, cut-out papers, scraps of cardboard… “I have favorite materials, like foam board for the main structure, but I’m currently experimenting with laser-cut MDF wood. Making miniatures is a permanent art of tinkering. There is no school, no method: I experiment and learn at the same time.”. » For each project, Nicolas Pierre takes photos on site, documents himself, cross-references his data with those from Google Earth – a valuable tool for miniaturists. And he doesn’t rule out any material, like the raw spaghetti forming the grooves of a zinc roof, unsuspected under the gray paint. Or the cigarette paper slipped behind a window, the perfect illusion of a drawn curtain.
You have 69.7% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.
