Sugar
Going by the rather unique name of Sugar Power, or simply ‘Sugar’ as is her preference—’no need to be too formal’—this young designer has more than just an unconventional name. In addition to her unique style and approach to her work, Sugar’s general outlook on life and attitude to… well, everything… are to be admired. Loueze Harper spoke to Sugar about her unconventional approach and genuine love of life.
Although she gives her professional title—‘if you had to pin me down to a title’-—as collage illustrator and filmmaker, Sugar confesses she dabbles in ‘a bit of everything’, including (among other things) writing and photography.
Born in Vancouver, Canada, Sugar has dual citizenship with Canada and Switzerland, but has adopted Australia as a third home.
‘I came to Australia to complete my Masters Degree in Animation and Interactive Media,’ Sugar explains. ‘I fell head over heels in love with the city of Melbourne and, luckily, have been able to drum up some wonderful freelance projects here as well as some pretty amazing friends.’
Unable to leave her new love completely, Sugar now divides her time between Melbourne and Zurich.
A spoonful of sugar
Beginning with the act of ‘fingerpainting in the backyard when I was three—my first vivid and haptic memory’, Sugar recalls that as a child, she was very adventurous.
‘I was a tom-boy,’ she laughs. ‘I thought I was Huckleberry Finn. I played in the woods a lot, swam, wore a toy revolver strapped across my chest and believed cheetahs roamed the earth behind our house.’
It is this sort of child-like overactive imagination that continues to run through Sugar’s work today. In adolescence, Sugar’s future started to take shape, although she admits to being ‘a bad ass’ for a bit.
‘I loved punk rock and started travelling when I was 14. This was also around the time that I began drawing and painting seriously and visiting the galleries of Europe,’ she recalls, ‘which had a huge influence on me.’
Granulated sugar
No one can say that Sugar hasn’t earned her career through a long list of credentials.
‘I have a Bachelor Degree in Art History from Concordia University in Montreal, Canada,’ she says. ‘And a Degree in Digital Art from Emily Carr College of Art and Design in Vancouver. I studied painting for a year at the Instituto Allende in San Miguel, Mexico and I also recently completed my Master’s Degree in Animation and Interactive Media at RMIT, Melbourne, Australia.’
A long list of influences
Sugar lists her influences in a matter-of-fact, no-particular-order kind of way—as is her wont—reeling off the likes of David Bowie, e.e. cummings, Emily Dickinson, Federico Garcia Lorca, Pippilotti Rist, Marcel Dzama, Andrei Tarkovsky, Walt Whitman, Eva Hesse, Sappho, Stephan Sagmeister, Pablo Neruda and Joseph Cornell.
Listening to this ad hoc list, however, it would appear these might just have been the tip of the iceberg, as it were; the particular group of influences that happened to strike her at the time the question was asked. As a result, you can’t help but wonder whether she might add many more to this list if asked in a different time or place. Which is not to say that Sugar’s work is based on any one of these influences or other… more so that it seems she is inspired by so much—writing, music, art and more—that it would be impossible to list everything all at once.
A sugar-y outlook
To hear Sugar speak, it’s hard not to be inspired by her naturally bubbly and addictive personality, energetic attitude and positive outlook on life. All the experiences that have lead her to where she is today seem to be stored away in her imaginary filing cabinet, never far from being called upon to, no doubt, lead her off in countless future directions.
‘Travelling, inevitably, shaped my consciousness,’ she says, adding that she believes her artistic drive was there from the beginning. ‘I can’t remember a time when I did not feel elated when I was making things.’
Nothing seems to phase her and she meets any new challenges with the same ‘can do’ attitude, discarding any ‘junk’ along the way that doesn’t complement or enhance her creative journey, rather than plodding along doing something she doesn’t enjoy or believe in (as so many people do).
‘I think having a lot of shitty jobs along the way cleared the path for what I didn’t want to do,’ she explains. ‘So it was rather easy to decide that if I did not do what I loved in some shape or form, I would disintegrate rather rapidly into a murky, floppy haze.’
For the love of it
In keeping with her healthy, life-lovin’ attitude, there doesn’t seem to be a single thing about her job that Sugar doesn’t enjoy.
‘I love everything,’ she says with an enthusiasm insinuating the truth of her statement. ‘I love meeting new clients, re-visiting old clients, researching themes I am unfamiliar with, brainstorming, building, creating, editing, collaborating and delivering.’
In addition to this (or perhaps because of it), Sugar has a wonderful sense of humour and quickness of wit that add to her general quirkiness. Describing the way she typically starts a piece for a client, Sugar quips:
‘a lot of lateral activity and then a glass of wine is always grounding’.
In terms of challenges in an ever-changing industry, Sugar seems to brush aside the suggestion of this being in any way a barrier to her success.
‘I see few challenges at this point,’ she says adding that perhaps a 48-hour day might be of use now and again. ‘Oh, and while we’re at it, maybe a time machine—but more just for the fun of it.’
Lint Museum
In addition to making collages and films, Sugar is curator of the Lint Museum—her wonderful website that is a joy to visit.
‘Have you ever looked closely at a piece of lint?’ Sugar asks by way of explanation. ‘It’s a sort of miniature diaristic sculpture; beautiful little sagebrush-like archives of personal journeys.’
Fragmented and dreamlike—in one of her diary pieces, ‘falling down the rabbit hole’, Sugar references Lewis Carroll’s rather apt ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’—the title is quite fitting. There is so much to see and it’s quite relaxing to just drift in and out of the many pages.
‘I wanted to build a museum of little things,’ she says. ‘Ephemera, garbage, the thrown-away, unloved and overlooked details of the world that make me giddy with delight. I thought lint was the perfect metaphor for a museum of collaged little things.’
And perfect it is. There are lots of little bits and pieces that make up the Lint Museum. In addition to her online diary, there’s a section on ‘travel’ which includes observational snippets about each of the places she’s visited. Another section, ‘obsessions’, is one of her trademark ad-hoc lists to accompany more of her work.
Styles & themes
Sugar’s rather unique style—in her own words, ‘intuitive, frolicking, honest, fun and sometimes lascivious’—suits her personality.
With two agents—Val Bassett in the United States and Margarethe Hubauer in Germany—Sugar’s international clients range from ad agencies and international magazines to book publishers, the music industry and film companies.
‘I also have some private patronage for my artworks and show regularly in galleries,’ she says, adding that recent collaborations in Australia include Saatchi & Saatchi, Young and Rubicam, Toyota, Stu magazine, and the City of Melbourne. Although she works within the confines of each project, Sugar’s style is such that she is able to inject her own brand of stylistic theme into her work.
‘I’m mainly called upon for work that involves imagination, intuition, love, ephemera, dreaming and themes that are difficult to illustrate in a practical way,’ she says. ‘Poetic themes.’ Her tools of choice include (again, in no particular order): Photoshop, Illustrator, After-Effects, paints, pen, pencil, garbage,
a digital camera and digital video.
A sweet future
In terms of the future, Sugar has a whole imagination’s worth of ideas.
‘I’m heading toward children’s books at the moment,’ she says, ‘In the future, I would like to do more artwork for film and film sets, as well as 3-dimensional illustration for hotel rooms and window displays.’
Is there no end to this girl’s talents?
‘I can twirl my tongue 360 degrees and swear in 13 languages,’ she laughs somewhat proudly.
Filed under: DG magazine 127
