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Opportunity LOL's Spotlight Interview: Artists Guillaume & Julia Lachambre of Artmymind
Published: June 15th, 2011
Julia and Guillaume Lechambre is an artistic superduo that goes by Artmymind. It's been really fun blogging their work in the last year, since seeing images of their epic custom toys and the info they send may be as close as I'm going to be able to own a piece for myself because their work sells FAST! Seriously - I'm refreshing their store, go grab a soda, come back and all toys sold fast. Of course, if I can get enough people to click on ads maybe I can hire them for a commission since that would be the ultimate in toy ownership. Artmymind was staying in Japan during the disasters in Japan in 2011 and have since relocated, but their work has not seemed to have slowed and it's a big honor to have an interview with such hardworking talented people. Learn their thoughts on working as a couple, inspirations, favorite platforms to work on, advice for up-and-coming artists, and more. Enjoy! There are a few duos who create custom toys. 64 Colors and The Beast Brothers specifically come to mind. What do you think are the benefits of working together? Who does what? Julia: "Working together is for us a real strength as we are not only bringing our own inspiration to Artmymind but also supporting each other. Two brains are better than one when it comes to take important decisions. :)" Guillaume: "We are both sharing every aspect of our art but have at the same time our specialisaties. Julia is our tailor, accessorizes and weapon master and I am more focusing on the paint and sculpting. Otherwise, working together is really a plus as you always have someone to prepare coffee... Awesome! ;)" How do you handle disagreements in how something looks? Has a difficult decision over an accessory led to any arguments? Julia: "That's a tough one. We definitely have two strong personalities and sometime, when we are coming with two different visions of a concept, we are both trying to defend our ideas. But, it is not long before we work it out and most of the time, come with something better." Guillaume: "I have only one thing to add. She is the woman so she is right. I am not kamikaze ;)"
What came first, the relationship or the work? Who had the inclination to customize toys first? Guillaume: "We actually met before starting working on designer toys. I have always been fascinated by art and my grand mother was an amazing painter. I spent years escaping this aspect of my life before meeting Julia who believed in my ideas and encouraged me to start working on art again." Julia: "I have always been into painting and crafting as a hobby but never heard about toy design. We met when living in Ireland and we both had a good position in our jobs. Guillaume introduced me to the vinyl world and fascinated me with this endless potential of creation. Soon after, we left everything behind to create Artmymind, choosing the opportunity of working together and living our passion before the comfort of a regular job." What benefits do you find from living in Japan? Guillaume: "We moved to Japan to feed our creativity with the incredible amount of inspiration offered by this very unique country. As we had the chance to live in the real Japanese way, surrounded by temples and shrines, we gathered a priceless experience and a real love for this culture." How have the natural disasters in Japan affected your lives and your work? Julia: "This might have been the most extreme experience in our life. We were guests in Japan and our loss has been only material but this is a real disaster for the people who lived around us. Some lost everything, sometime a member of their family during this terrible event. We stayed in Japan as long as we could to support and show our love to the Japanese people who welcomed us so well in their country but after a week of continuous earthquakes and the nuclear situation becoming unstable, we had to leave and got evacuated through Korea by the French Government. We already miss our lives back there."
Your toys sell pretty much immediately from the time they hit your store. How much of that is how you promote your toys ahead of time and get people psyched up for the release? Guillaume: "We simply have some amazing collectors supporting our work and showing us much love for our art. We are hard workers and spending a crazy amount of time on our pieces to make them worth the interest. We are actually rarely promoting our releases more than three days before sale, something that we might change in the future. The fact that we sold each of our pieces instantly is amazing and we are really grateful to the blogs like Opportunity LOL, Spankystokes, Toysrevil, Tomopop and others for publishing our work and supporting us." How do you view social networking? How valuable do you think it is for an artist in specifically the toy customizing business? Julia: "Tools like twitter and other are very important to artists and are a way to get directly to collectors. It is clearly requiring lot of work and time to publish on as many network as possible but this is the way to make it work and get your art out there." Do you collect toys? If so, can we see your collection? Who are your top five-ten artists customizing toys today? Guillaume: "We love toys but as we are traveling a lot, we can't afford to get stuck with a collection. Let say that we have a huge stock of vinyl that we are collecting as long as it takes us to strip them of. When we will be settling down, we will definitely start on building a serious one. ;)" Julia: "It is hard to choose between so many amazing artists. Some are producing very inspiring and beautiful pieces of art and some of them even showed us that with enough effort and faith, you really can live of your art. Our top ten not necessarily in order would be: Chauskoskis, Kevin Gosselin, Squink, Huck Gee, Beast Brothers, Jeremiah Ketner, 64 colors, Grimsheep, Fuller and Jon Paul Kaiser. We have so many others coming to our mind and particulary Smallstuffpepe from Switzerland who if he doesn't get to customise enough vinyl, is an amazing artist when it comes to wooden toys."
Could you give the Opportunity LOL readers an idea of an average day in the lives of Guillaume & Julia Lachambre? Julia: "Getting up and going for a run and some physical exercises in the forest. Then during breakfast, brainstorming and planning our work plan for the day. Getting to our studio (next door :)) and working all day long on designs and customs only stopping for coffee, dinner and relaxation on our terrace with more future projects planning." What are your inspirations for your art? Do you watch a lot of martial arts films? Julia: "Our actual work is greatly based on our time spent in Japan but our general inspiration is coming from everything surrounding us. Whatever subject of conversation can lead to an idea popping out of our mind that we next transform on a new concept." Guillaume: "I have engraved in my mind a childhood filled with Bruce lee and Jacky Chan's movies but except some very good productions, we are not watching that many of them." Your recent custom Foomi "Kataleon" is my favorite so far - can we expect more Artmymind Foomis? What is you favorite platform to work on? Guillaume: "We loved working on this piece which met a really good reception and interest. Foomi platform is a great one and offer new possibilities for customization. We definitely have in our books a series of them." Julia: "Dunnys might be our favorite one as we love working on a miniature scale. It is very funny to try fitting a lot of details on such a small toy. :)"
If you could give an up-and-coming artist one year into his work one piece of advice - what would you say to them? Guillaume: "If you really want to make a living of your art, you need to get the guts to show of your work and give yourself the amount of time necessary to seriously work on it. It is crucial to focus on details and quality, not getting lazy on designs and doing the easy way. Work hard, keep perfecting your art and get to know fellow artists. At last, our most important advice is to respect your customers and give them the best service possible." What can the Opportunity LOL readers look forward to from Artmymind in 2011 and beyond? Julia: "We left Paris, it's noise and temptation and moved to Poland in a quiet, lovely and spacious place to work in the best conditions possible. We have a crazy amount of projects and collaborations on the way and we are really excited to make some crazy ones come to life. We are also planning our own original figures and other goodness. For now, you can expect a new Dunny 3 and 8 inches series coming soon." Julia & Guillaume: "Thank you to Opportunity LOL for giving us the chance to share our experience with all of you." Awesome! Thank you to Julia and Guillaume (Artmymind) for answering our questions! Need more Artmymind? Website | Store | Twitter | Facebook | Flickr Check out our previous posts on Artmymind here.
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