Mari Sato’s Artist Statement
If you were to give my heart a papercut, and then collect the blood from the cut and turn it into a dragon from a storybook, and the dragon could breathe fire, the fire from the dragon is the energy I hope to embody through my artwork. In this world that feels so enclosed in its opportunities for spontaneity, animation has become my escape to a place where possibilities are infinite. This pandemic-induced confinement has led me to revisit mythical worlds from my childhood and video footage from my past, which help to revive my imagination through their seeds of sentimentality.
My process is one of navigating uncertainty. I read, watch, and listen, as I go about my life with my art in mind. In the mornings, after drinking coffee and considering the day ahead, I go to the studio or to my desk, and I pick up a pen. The time of creating is the time in which I let my mind drift into its subconscious. Usually, I like to listen to something in the background. This animation has been made through a podcast series about Princess Diana, Trevor Noah’s autobiography, Harry Potter Books seven, three, five, and six, Princess Nokia’s full discography, a podcast series about O.J. Simpson, The Secret Garden, and more. Through the months, as I have grown tired of drawing with pen, I have shifted to working with the vibrant colors of Photoshop, acrylic paints, and water-based markers. Sometimes the ideas stay as they are, drawings that have found a life of their own, but other times I tuck them away into my orange accordion folder kept in waiting for the addition of a companion or home.
I contemplated the combination of animation with live-action video for a long time. But as I arranged the pieces of animation, I became convinced that there was something distinctly grounding for my animation to be contextualized through the recognizable world captured by digital video. I selected these sounds and videos from my archives of footage taken at and away from home. All are sentimental. This project contains the meows of feral cats in Indonesia, words exchanged with loved ones, bison as they roam the Badlands, and other snippets of documentation that recall feelings of life.
In connecting my pieces of animation, sound, and video, I focus on the feelings they emit. The colors, textures, and presence of these pieces inform their respective tones. From there, I weave all of the strands together in the video editing and animation finalizing process to give you what you see today.