First, could you introduce us to yourself, and your work?
My name is Rachelle Leblanc and I am an artist and woodworker who has recently relocated to Toronto from Vancouver to pursue a degree in Industrial Design from OCAD. With an educational background in cabinet making from BCIT, I have spent several years apprenticing under established craftspeople within different disciplines. I now plan to apply my previous experiences to a broader perspective of art and design. My work has been a continuing exploration and reference of traditional artistic format and presentation through subverting context and material.
What initially drew you to the creation of your Fur Portrait?
It is hard for me to pinpoint exactly what drew me to create Fur Portrait. I am still at a point as an artist where my process is evolving both aesthetically and conceptually, and more so hope that each work will be the catalyst to further exploration of ideas and creativity. This particular piece was really about how the combination of these materials would bend or manipulate the context in which they were presented. I was driven by my own curiosity to juxtapose these particular materials against the traditional portrait format.
When approaching a new project, do you find you are guided more by intuition, or do you begin the process with a firm idea of the finished object in mind?
I always have a very concrete visualization of the project before I begin and then it becomes a matter of figuring out how to execute the work as closely as possible to my original concept. This pursuit can be challenging because ultimately there are certain ideas that can not be reconciled with my original vision, which ends up forcing me to adapt and in some cases concede to my materials and environment.