Interdisciplinary Artist Ines Le Cannellier Talks Food as Art
Interview by Katie Lynn Johnston
This week, I sat down with the wonderful artist, writer, food-enthusiast, and dancer, Ines Le Cannellier (“Painting?,” “Palette,” and “Stillness”), to talk about what’s new, being a creative in quarantine, and how her broad creative interests weave themselves into her work.
Watch the full interview here or listen to it below.
Since you’ve gone back to France, do you feel a different creative energy? Are you creating in a different way than you think you were in Chicago?
That’s interesting. I wouldn’t generalize France because if I were in Paris it would have been different than where I am now, but I think the environment definitely affects me. I don’t know if it affects my creativity or if it’s just myself in general. I would say that being here, because it’s in the countryside and it’s mostly nature and there are highways, [it’s not the same because] it’s a different type of “city-ness”—it’s not urban. I think subconsciously it helped me because I was less stressed by this environment. The issue with living in a big city is that you have your own mental health struggles and then you have the stress of the big city that piles on top of that. In New York, during my first year, I was burnt-out by the first semester. I was also in a really bad mental health state, but the city was very overwhelming. I think being here for a semester was really good for me because it helped me center in on myself. It was isolating, but I think ultimately it did help me figure things out by myself which is what I needed in that moment. I was really lucky because we had [nice weather]. In the North of France it’s pretty gray and rainy—it’s not summer all the time, but we actually had a lot of beautiful sunny days. The sun really helps and just the fact that I can open my window and there are trees outside. I would say that in terms of creativity it helped be less stressful which ultimately helps your creativity. I was also very busy with college classes so I wasn’t really working on personal stuff a lot, but I think that [it helped]. You’ve probably heard of writers that go to a secluded space in the middle of the woods to write because they need focus, and I think there’s definitely a lot of truth to that, a lot of virtue to that. Some writers feed off of the chaos and energy of cities, some people love that—I’ve read about writers that just love New York because it’s so chaotic and messy, but others are a lot more like “I ned to be alone,” which I think depends on what kind of writing you do and what your style and process is. Everyone works differently. I think for me, I like to have both. I like to have moments where I’m in the city and I have a lot of energy, but I also need breaks [from that]. It’s nice to have both.
Creating over quarantine has been such a difficult thing, no matter what you’re doing, so what was your experience creating over quarantine like? Did you create over quarantine or did you take a break?
At the beginning of quarantine I was already going on break so I ended up just staying home, you know, longer. I remember having this jolt of motivation. I was so motivated to get stuff done, and that included doing writing and creative projects. But as it wore on, it was a lot harder to maintain that motivation. It was kind of when I began my “healing journey” I guess—recovering from my ED and things like that, and so it was kind of a weird time. You know, [so much] was happening in the world. I definitely have a very new relationship with social media that I developed over the pandemic because I felt the peer-pressure that I needed to be creative, I needed to get things done. It was like if you weren’t using this downtime to be productive, then that was a waste of time and you were being lazy. I definitely felt that pressure of needing to create and, especially as a Design student and a creative in general, I felt that pressure even more. “This is supposed to be my life’s purpose, my life’s career so I need to do something,” right? I say that to say that some of it was organic, some of it was inspiration and motivation, but some of it was really just like peer pressure and social media being social media. So I had moments of “Oh, yeah, I’m going to do this project, and I’m going to work on this”—periods of tryings to be regular with my writing or trying to work on photography, [but it wasn’t all like that]. I was trying to work on photography skills and graphic design skills, so I went on things like Skillshare, you know, because I thought “I need to invest in whatever.” I don’t know—I was very much swayed by the general state of mind of the world and everything. I don’t regret anything I did, but in hindsight, [my thinking] was all very temporary. Suddenly I was an artist for three weeks and then life happened again and I moved on to other things. I wish I’d had more consistency, but I was dealing with a lot of personal stuff, which—you know—tends to get in the way.
I totally understand that. I think I probably had a similar experience where you feel like you have to get things done otherwise you’re a failure, which is not really the case.
Yeah. I will say though, I did start my newsletter in quarantine so that was big. I’ve wanted to have a newsletter for a while, a couple months before any of this started. So when quarantine happened I was like, “You know what, just go for it.” I guess that’s one accomplishment that I can put down.
What is it that draws you to design, writing, and art? Was there an experience initially that made you go, “Oh, this is it. This is what I want to do?” I know you also dance and that’s been a part of your life for a long time.
You’re catching me at a really weird moment in my life where I’m actually questioning a lot of my interests and my choices in terms of path of study. [But] I think growing up in Chicago was a big influence on me in terms of my interest in architecture and design. I think I don’t really know why I got into [design], because no one in my family is a designer—there are many artists in my family, but not really any designers. I don’t know if genes is connected to any of this, but I feel like maybe, as I was growing up, I did kind of absorb the artist mentality. My grandpa’s a big collector, has always loved art; my aunt, she’s a web designer but she was a fine artist before that, and so I think I kind of absorbed it from that. And, you know, Chicago is an architecture city, that’s kind of what it’s known for, and I just loved being in the city. [Growing up,] we didn’t live downtown so it was always such a fun trip to go downtown and just be [there], go shopping and see the city, and I always loved that. Also, I would say TV [played a role]. I would watch all the design, home renovation shows, and I don’t really know why I started to watch them, but I always gravitated toward those shows more than other shows. I think those little experiences added up to me having this interest in design. I’ve always danced so it’s just always been in my bones. When I started walking, I was dancing, that’s what my parents tell me—so that’s always been with me and that’ll always be with me. Also I would say I’m very privileged in the sense that my parents exposed us to a lot of aspects of culture. We were always able to go to museums, we’ve traveled a lot, and even going to restaurants, that’s a big part of my [creative] relationship with food. So I think all of those—although maybe it’s not art in the purest sense—contribute to my art-making and creativity because they’re aspects of culture and they all involve the creative process. It’s really a mix of things.
How did you go about making your video, “Painting?” What was your thought process behind that piece and what prompted you to make it?
That was for my final, actually, for my first semester at Parsons. It was a class called Time, where we learned about time-based media like photography, video-editing, video production—we did some animation, too—just introductions to all those media. I can’t remember the prompt for the final, to be honest, but it was pretty open as to what we could produce, and I wanted to do something with food. That’s a recurring theme in my work. In that class I realized that video editing is actually kind of fun. It was the first time that I ever used a video editing software, but I liked it. I liked seeing the images and layering sounds over images and coordinating the sound with the video—I think all that is really cool, so I decided I wanted to do a video. I was doing some research, gathering a moodboard and inspiration, and as I thought about food, I thought, “What I really want to show is how food is a creative medium.” Cooking is art because there’s inspiration, you have to think about it, you kind of sketch the idea in your head, you go through iterations and trials, and come up with a final product. I had in mind fine dining restaurants who have a way they present their food that is a little more elaborate, and I wanted to have the plate as a canvas and the food as the paint like that—like painting with food—composing a canvas. That’s what I sought out to do, and in terms of the style of the video, I got the inspiration from an artist I really like named Heather Day. She’s an abstract painter and I remember looking on her website and her introductory video was a kind of montage of her working and you could hear the scratch of the pallet on the canvas or her smearing the paint or her pouring the paint—all these very luxurious, smooth, satisfying sounds—and I just loved the way it was put together. The images were beautiful, the lighting was amazing, and there was no sound other than the ones she was making. I tried to emulate that same kind of emphasis of sounds that you wouldn’t really notice in another context in my video. People don’t really sit around listening to a paintbrush being scratched on a canvas—that’s not something you pay attention to, so I wanted to bring that forward, and to show the commonalities between food and art, I laid the paint sounds over the food images and vice versa. That was the concept behind the whole thing. It was a tough video because I was alone to shoot it—it was a one person project—so you have to deal with the tripod and the camera and trying to get the angles and whatever, and there were a lot of software issues. You always run into software issues: the video doesn’t save or it’s lagging or whatever so that added a lot of stress, but ultimately I’m proud of the final outcome.
This leads into my next question which is who are your inspirations?
Ah! That’s a hard one because I have so many people. It really depends, too, on what I’m doing. Inspiration for writing is different than inspiration for dancing or making art. I read a lot so I think the reason I became a good writer is because I was reading a lot. Not necessarily just books—I think people have a misconception that it’s only books that you have to read to be good at something or smart. You can read articles, the news, blogs, magazines. I’ve always read a lot of those things and that definitely influences the way I write. I try to be perceptive of the tone of the writing so that when I’m writing my own work I imagine that same thing, how I want it to sound. It’s hard to pinpoint one or two writers [who have inspired me]. In terms of art in general, it’s really a mixed bag because, again it’s my environment—being in Chicago, being in New York, that energy. I try to be as observant as I can when I’m not on my phone. I try to look at my surroundings and that’s what appeals to me about New York, too, is that you want to gawk and look. It’s that first-timer’s polished image of New York. That eventually kind of dissipates as you realize what New York is really like, but I still think that the city is fascinating and it’s important. You’re always going to discover new things if you pay attention so I think definitely my surroundings [are a big inspiration]. As much as I don’t like social media, I have to give it credit for allowing us to have access to a lot of inspiration and information. I look at a lot of artists on Instagram, I used to follow a lot of food bloggers as well. I always loved reading the stories that come before recipes, it was always something I focused on so I think that also gives me inspiration. You know, food is more than just food, there’s a story behind it, you can make it into poetry almost. I could go on. There’s so many things that inspire me. There’s several dancers that I just love and that I’m in awe of. The Jabbawockeez are a dance crew I’ve watched since I was nine. They’re amazing. Recently I got into a crew called the Kinjaz, and they’re amazing as well. They’re both these groups that are really making dance more than just being a back-up dancer. All those things kind of cross over into different kinds of design.
My final question is what are you working on now? Is there anything you would like to plug or share?
I don’t know if I should talk about this now, but I’ve been kind of on a break for the past month, honestly. I haven’t been working on too many things. I think I really just needed a break following the last semester of school, it was really tough, so now I’m just feeling back and ready to start making more things. I have been working on a book. It’s a collection of anecdotes—I don’t really know how to categorize it. It’s inspired by a French book called, “La Première gorgée de bière [et autres plaisirs minuscules],” which essentially is a collection of little stories or little descriptions of small pleasures of life. They’re very French things in the book in this case, but I want to create my own version of that, describing small pleasures of life or those little joys in life. That’s one thing that I’ve been working on, while also continuing to write poetry as much as I can. I don’t really have anything super planned out or rigid, it’s more like what I’m feeling, but I think eventually I do want to assemble [my poetry] into a collection as well. Those are the main things that I’m working on. This [other thing] isn’t really to promote yet, but it’s this idea of blending food with writing, design, and dance in a space. Right now it’s really just a concept—there’s nothing concretely done—but I’m working on that and trying to develop the concept of making a restaurant experience more akin to going to a performance, and thinking about how to elevate that and make it more multi-dimensional rather than just the standardized dining experience. Not that that’s not good, but more of questioning how can we bring all these disciplines together? Because they’re disciplines I’m very much interested in and they all have a very important place in my life. I’m also still dancing as much as I can to keep my creative juices flowing.
Ines Le Cannellier is an interdisciplinary artist and writer who explores the relationship between food, art, movement, emotions and nature in both written and visual formats. Her process is idea based, and fueled by the everyday. Reflection is the main tool she wields to allow her ideas to develop. Emotion is the thread that links all of her works together. She is always oscillating between concept and materiality, intangibility and tangibility. Her mind is sometimes in a struggle with itself, the fluid side being in constant ebb and flow - often in response to what is happening on a societal level - while the rational side attempts to grasp and control the thoughts. Her works are tied together by a sense of fluidity, which exists on a spiritual, emotional, and physical level.
She is a sophomore student at Parsons School of Design currently majoring in Interior Design and minoring in Dance. She is French but grew up in Chicago, IL where she attended a French School. She has been a dancer since she could walk, and also enjoys baking, reading, walking, and eating (dark) chocolate.