Margaux Lewis
- 19 hours ago
- 4 min read
Margaux "Marcel" Lewis is a sculptor and stop motion animator based between Portland, Maine and Blackstone Valley, Massachusetts. They studied sculpture at Maine College of Art & Design and make work from paper pulp, cardboard and sawdust, then animates it. The world being built is what Lewis calls a queer, playful, scrappy little utopia. They teach kids at LoveLab Studios and have a residency coming up at Sculpture Space.
Q: Tell us a bit about yourself. How did you end up making sculptures and stop motion films?
A: I've been enamored with stop motion animation ever since I was a kid, mystified by the surreal magic of it all, in awe of the depth of the spaces that are created and allured by the touch that goes into its production. The labor of animated movement, the wear and tear of body and object that undergoes a repetitive alteration of form over time. As someone who primarily makes physical objects, and an avid lover of immersive films, my interest lies in the combination of two worlds. I explore what happens when we take a handmade object that is physically grounded in our reality and place it within a cinematic, unreal space.
Q: You make your sculptures from paper pulp, cardboard, sawdust. What is it about those scrappy, recycled materials that works for you?
A: My practice within the sculpting process and corresponding animation is one that heavily considers transformation. I approach recycled material as an exploration of possibility, imagining or fantasizing about how something as ordinary as cardboard can be transformed into something completely different, something alive. I am interested in creating textures and depth in nonorganic materiality, something that is believable to the aesthetics of the object or creature that I am creating.
Additionally, using base scrap materials that are considered "waste" as my primary ingredients allows me to have an almost unlimited resource supply, and the whole process of making my base materials allows me to pivot during studio days where I feel uninspired and would rather rip up and blend paper for hours, while still being "productive."
Q: Humor keeps showing up in your work as something that does real work. When did you start trusting it could carry serious weight?
A: I am grateful that the audience that I attract is willing to giggle and be brought a little closer to their playful inner child when they interact with my work. I can trust that laughter is something that is contagious by nature and when we allow ourselves to laugh we become more in touch with our emotions; laughter is grounding. And humor or laughter as a primary reaction is valuable because it is freeing. It doesn't have to become something that is overintellectualized or "correctly understood," it just reflects the spontaneous emotions that are currently being felt.
I have always wanted to make work that is transportative and can temporarily bring us away from the chaos of the exterior world. It is in these small moments of exhalation and relief, where we can become untethered from whatever is holding us down, however monumental or minuscule that weight may be.
Q: You've written about creating escapist experiences. What are you escaping from, and where are you going?
A: By creating a larger stylized world I am escaping from the real world, one that I don't particularly feel at home in, and at times feel quite disconnected from. When I am searching for an escape from my present experience within the strangeness of the everyday, I feel drawn to create things that are equally strange, nonsensical, silly, and at times childish. This imagined world is my own queer, playful, scrappy little utopia. A colorful space where there is room for play, where everything isn't so literal, a lyrical world that feels like the space between a story that a child is excitedly telling you about and a weird, yet beautiful dream that you just awoke from but just can't quite remember the full details of. I want to materialize this world, to make it real and accessible, and I think I will spend the rest of my life bringing it into fruition.
Q: You teach kids at LoveLab Studios and want to study trauma-informed care. How does that connect to what you make?
A: When I am working with children, I connect at the child's level and allow myself to be fully present within their imagination and creativity, and it gives me permission to be fully present and attentive within my own imagination when I am working in my own studio. Art and the ability to be creative are deeply therapeutic tools. The process of creating and experiencing art can be a way of coping, a way to find safety, an outlet for processing complex emotions, and an abstract way to find answers.
We all need these things, we all need to experience an outlet or to create a tool that helps us understand ourselves and the world a little differently. I want to have the ability to connect others to what they need, whether it be through art or through specialized therapeutic care. As an artist, I am creating spaces that I can return into when I need to be somewhere else, healing through the process of escapism.
Q: You have a residency at Sculpture Space coming up. What are you planning to bring into that time?
A: At Sculpture Space I will be diving even deeper into production for my upcoming experimental film and sculptural collection, which is about Sea Elephant-Mermaids, the desire for change in an unchanging body, and finding comfort within the depths (of the ocean). Right now I have a few sketchbooks full of storyboards, concept sketches, and notes about underwater movement and strange scenarios that I am excited to bring to life. I hope to get in touch with my inner aquatic creature and lose myself in the studio, creating large sculptural set pieces and specialized puppets with new fabrication techniques that I am currently workshopping. And of course I'll be bringing a ton of cardboard, curiosity, and so much energy.
