Much like how this story started, the artwork of Emily Cooper begins with a blank white canvas on a computer screen and a bit of anxiety. A lot rests on the petite shoulders of the 25-year-old photographer and illustrator. Cooper is a collage artist. Her surreal blends of retrospective photos and icons result in fascinating visual representations of the world, including the poster she created for 100 Saints You Should Know on this week's cover of the WE. Often tasked with conceptualizing theatre productions and festivals across Canada, she starts with the main client: the play.
The answers for me are always within the words of the play the metaphors, the ideas, the strengths and it's my job to find the ones that will translate visually. I try to make my work as poetic as possible and not so literal. If there's a line that really makes my brain spark, I'll follow that and see where it leads me."
Pick up a copy of Vancouver theatre company Pacific Theatres 2011/2012 season brochure and youre flipping through months of fine art in the making, with a faint whiff of macabre think dog-headed humans for Danny and the Deep Blue Sea or ravens circling above the unsmiling and unsuspecting A Man and Some Women. Each trip with her scanner and camera to vintage photography stores or library archives adds to her categorized cache of images. The explosion of clipped bits and pieces in her art room yields even more. But she has to find the right combination to set the mood.
One of her most daunting challenges came recently in the form of the brochure for the Shaw Festival, Canada's second largest theatre company. She becomes breathless just reliving it.
My dad had worked for them for about 20 years doing their brochures. Because of that connection, for them to ask me to do it years later was an honour. But to read and illustrate all 11 plays and come up with ideas for that, just on my own, was the most terrifying thing I've ever had to do. It almost broke me I took it so seriously. I had about two months, but the research is so intensive it takes up about half of that time.
Her words quicken as she talks about her creative process.
Because it's collage you're almost casting the play with the person from the time period: A 45-year-old woman who has dark hair and is a light spirit. Or maybe she's a pilot! I have to start looking for a 45-year-old woman who's a pilot, dressed in the right time period. Even then I could find the right person and someone could say 'I wish she was looking to the left.' I'm a Photoshop queen; using it with art offers you so many options. You could have a phone in an image and maybe it's a yellow phone, maybe it's a green phone, yellow or green, yellow or green? And you go crazy. In my final image I'll have maybe 50 layers and every layer there is an option of changing something. Sometimes at the end of the day I can't make decisions. After I go home from work, choosing what food I want to eat can feel overwhelming."
Its hard to fathom how she is ever able to sign off on a project; such is the curse of knowing what you are capable of.
And Emily Cooper is more than capable. The daughter of a photographer and a Studio 58 theatre teacher, Cooper grew up on Vancouvers "scary, grungy" streets of Main and 18th and fondly recalls her daycare days spent watching rehearsals at her mom's work and developing her imaginative eye amidst larger than life sets. After graduating top of her class in photography from Sheridan, Cooper went on to establish her niche with an intensive Photoshop course at the Santa Fe Workshops. "Because I can't draw, Photoshop was my pen. It opened up this whole new realm to me. I wouldn't be here today if it wasn't for that course." Being asked by Andrew Eccles, one of her childhood heros and teachers, for a custom piece launched her confidence and encouraged her to keep developing her aesthetic.
"I just love changing scale and perspective. We live in such a normal world, it's a breath of fresh air to be around something different. It's like a sci-fi book. I try to challenge you in an abnormal way."
What started as fine art has grown into a thriving commercial career, but galleries and art directors still herald the vision behind her compositions. She is represented by Gallery 133 in Toronto and five of her images for the Shaw Festival just won Communication Arts and Applied Arts awards and will be featured in their illustration annuals.
Next time you come across some of her signature ephemera tacked to a lamppost on Broadway or handed to you as you find your seat in the lowered lights of the theatre for, say, 100 Saints You Should Know (May 4 to 26), take it home; youre holding an Emily Cooper original. (PacificTheatre.org)
You can follow Kelsey on Twitter @kelseyklassen.
