An Interview with Leo Carbonneau

4/22/21

by Clio Thayer

 Tell me about your senior project.

I’m creating a sustainable makeup brand. I’m trying to create a brand that’s still stylish and appealing — branded well, marketed well — but is also environmentally sustainable, because makeup and cosmetics create a lot of plastic waste. I’m going to be making refillable containers refills that will be packaged with either hemp or bamboo, which degrades in only a matter of months. Right now, I'm in the process of figuring out how to pitch it. 

What products are you doing?

I’m going to make a branding guide and website, then mock up some physical packaging, most likely a basic face collection — an eyeshadow palette, mascara, eyeliner, and eyebrow pencil. I’m going to do at least one but try for two. I’m gonna mock those up so people can see what they’d potentially look like, then I’ll make a poster on how to refill them.

Is this something you usually do?

Yeah, I really enjoy branding and marketing. It’s fun for me to even just come up with an imaginary company and make a logo for them. My goal throughout school has been to do something environmentally friendly, something ethical, and something that has a positive social impact, so I think this fits that really well for me. I’m a little nervous that I’ll go into my field and everything I do will be things I don’t really wanna do, or work that I don’t find to be ethical. It’s always made me nervous, but it’s good to show myself that I can make my own thing and be independent. 

What are some common themes in your work?

I do a lot of work that’s natural, like making jewelry using natural crystals. When I draw or do printmaking, I like to make animals. My theme for my relief class was endangered species. I like to bring in socioeconomic topics to raise awareness. I’m transgender, so I started doing a lot of work based around that and making people more aware of certain things. I wanna make work that subtly raises awareness, so that when you meet somebody who’s different, you know how to talk to them and not be disrespectful. 

When I was younger, I used to get really sensitive and upset when people would misgender me or ask questions about being trans. I realized “what if they’ve never met a trans person, how are they supposed to know?” That information isn’t widely provided to people unless they ask. That's why I wanna do this, so that other people aren’t in the position where they make somebody uncomfortable by asking questions, or where someone feels uncomfortable answering questions. Overall, I want what I’m doing to create a better environment socially and environmentally.

What are some of your inspirations?

A lot of the groups that inspire me are collectives. I like to see people working together because I usually try to do things by myself, but at a certain point working with other people is only going to enhance your message and your work. If I’m an expert in this, and you're an expert in that, then if we combine, we can have an even more solid and meaningful piece. 

There’s an anonymous guerrilla arts group called InDecline. A lot of what they do is aggressively political. They aren’t afraid to get their point across. They’re done being nice, and at this point, I’m also done being nice. “I’ve been understanding, I’ve explained this to you ten times, I’m done being nice. You need to listen to me or leave.” It’s really inspirational to see them doing protest art and standing up for other people using what they’re good at. That’s something I’ve always wanted to do— stand up for people who can’t stand up for themselves. 

There’s a similar group called Graphis. They started in the 60s in France, and they ended in the 80s. They were another public protest art group. It’s nice to see that people everywhere in the world are using art to express their feelings on injustice and to try to make a change. I like the way that collectives work together to create something that has a piece of each of them in it, but also speaks up as one whole voice. 

Kylie Cropper has always really inspired me. She’s a printmaking senior. I met her in freshman year and I loved her. Her attitude, and the way she was so open about things, and how she wouldn’t just sit there and watch something wrong happen. She always speaks up, and the work that she did in her lithography class, a really large print about police brutality, was amazing. She’s always speaking up for others. She’s really motivated me to stand up and use my voice in a more constructive way that will actually help people. Instead of just saying “Hey, this is my personal opinion and I’m gonna say it really loud,” I’d rather say, “I do feel this way personally, but so do all of these other people, and this is important and you all need to listen right now.” She’s always been really great about that: getting her point across and doing it in a way that’s non-aggressive, polite but firm. She’s great. I have some of her prints on the wall of my studio.

What is your studio like?

I’ve been remote for the past year, so I do have a home studio right now. My desk is set up with fun stuff like pictures of my family, art that I’ve done, art that my friends have done, some of my own prints too. I don’t have any space left on the walls to hang anything else. It’s been pretty nice to have my own space, but it’s also been lonely. I’d always been looking forward to working together in senior studio with all of my class, being able to just lean over and say “Hey what do you think of this?” instead of having to call someone up on zoom and hold it up to the camera, saying, “I know you can’t see it but can you tell me what you think!” It's also been nice to be able to do whatever I want in my space. I can take as many breaks as I want, I can sit in my pajamas and watch Netflix and have a snack and work at midnight if I want to. It’s been pretty liberating to have my own personal space that has no rules (except for the rule of my house, which is “don't ruin the walls or desk”). It’s freeing and is giving me the experience of working as a freelance artist in my own space, learning how to set up my own space properly, in a way that’s most effective for me to get my work done. 

Do you work mostly digitally or physically?

Most of my design work is digital, but there are things that I like to design and print out too. I paint as more of a hobby, but I do pour painting. I also do printmaking, that’s one of my minors, and it’s technically all physical even when I start pieces digitally. I get it to look exactly how I want, then I draw it physically to transfer onto whatever plate I’m working with. That all gets made into physical pieces. That's always something I’ve really enjoyed, being able to hold a finished piece and feel the ink on it. Screen printing specifically has so many layers to it and you can feel them all, it’s really cool tactile-wise. 

What medium did you start with, since you work in so many?

I guess when I was younger I started with just pencils and colored pencils, then learned how to work with artist markers, then actually started teaching myself how to use the computer, since we had the Adobe suite in my vocational arts class. From there I got really attached to digital work, and I’ve been doing that ever since. I've never given up traditional mediums, but I've definitely transitioned into using digital because I feel I have more freedom that way. 

What made you pick Graphic Design as your major?

Partially the financial reason, of course. It’s basically a guaranteed job as long as I don't goof up too badly, but also I’ve always just really loved to look at packaging. I used to collect packaging that I thought was cool and it made a big mess. I realized that the way I was working with my illustrations was more graphic than illustrative, so, I thought, why not just try that? I can still make things that are creative, such as illustrations within infographics. It’s mainly learning how to do the other side, like typesetting and how to make a logo. I feel like it really rounded out what I was interested in. 

How far and in what ways do you think you’ve grown since freshman year?

I’m still pretty scattered, definitely, but I feel like I was much more scattered when I got here. I worked heavily in all mediums, which made it hard to focus on anything. I’ve found a way to balance them out and/or combine them so that it’s a little more of a streamlined process. 

When I got here, I was also just confused about where I wanted to go and what I wanted to do. I still don’t have an exact position in mind, but I definitely know what I want to do now. I know the direction I want to move in and I’m perfectly prepared to wait five, ten years for the right position to come along, rather than taking a position that goes against my ethics or morals. I’ve prepared myself to wait, and not just jump into things. I had a teacher who said that one of the first few things she did was work at a plastic surgery place, doing their marketing, because she needed a job. She was photoshopping all this stuff and it made her feel awful. She shows it at the beginning of her classes to show that she regrets making that choice to use design for societal pressuring rather than something more positive. Now she does medical illustration and works with kids. That’s something that I’ve always kept in mind, not to rush into things just because I want a job in the arts. 

Where do you want your career to take you?

I would like to work for some sort of group/collective. Ideo is a really cool company. It’s completely different, they design a whole bunch of things that they’re not experts in, but they bring in experts and learn about it and try to creatively solve the problems, then they combine it all. That’s the ideal way I want to work, giving the best of ourselves and collaborating to make something that’s really revolutionary. 

Something else I’d be interested in is working for a nonprofit or environmental company, like the WWF, or even the National Park Service. My second choice for school was to be a marine biologist, so I’d love to work in a field where I can promote oceanic health. The Monterey Bay Aquarium or the New England Aquarium are big on conservation. I’d love to work in their marketing department. I was always bummed that I couldn’t be a marine biologist, because everyone told me I was so smart and that I should have done it. But now I’m more confident in myself, realizing that I can still use what I do to make a difference like I would’ve as a scientist. I’m just going about it differently. 

How has the community at school impacted you? 

I’ve made a lot of good friends. Courtney Davis is my best friend. I’m close with Faith Lauder. I’ve gotten so much inspiration from them. Courtney’s incredible, she's the hardest working person I know and she can do literally anything. She’s the best friend in the world, the nicest person. She motivates me to keep working, and there’s always that way you compare yourself to your friends, but she never makes me feel like we should be comparing ourselves. She’s always been so incredibly supportive of me, and Faith is the same way. We lived in Lowell together, so we shared a suite bathroom and would basically just walk through and knock on the door and say, “Hey, lets go do something!” That really helped keep me motivated during the winter. Having a friend right next door was awesome, we’d come over and help each other with work. Even though we’re all at home now, that’s definitely continued. We talk every day. I’ve made a lot of really good friends. I’ve met a lot of great teachers that have helped push me in the right direction. They helped open me up to new ideas and opportunities, showing me exactly what I needed. I’ve had great experiences with the faculty.

Do you have any advice for incoming freshmen or underclassmen?

Don’t hold yourself back with one medium or discipline. Don’t be afraid to try other disciplines. That’s what studio electives are for. Try new things and incorporate them into what you do now. If you’re an illustrator, try adding photography and see how you can make something really cool. All the famous artists we’ve seen have done so much through experimentation and accidents. School is the time to experiment and make mistakes. Once you’re out there, you can only make so many mistakes before you get yourself fired. At school, you can continue to make mistakes and you’ll have good people there to guide you and help you. Take advantage of the studios and the teachers and your friends. Work with them, sit with them, and let them inspire you, because unless you go to some sort of amazing art community right out of school, this is the best immersion you’re going to get into a fully artistic lifestyle. If you find that works for you and you really like it, then push yourself to find that after school too. Find out what you like now instead of saving that for senior year. Don’t be afraid to think about your senior project early. I’ve been thinking about it since freshman year, and it’s not the idea that I would’ve come up with back then, but it got me thinking about what type of work I’m interested in. To me it seems a lot less daunting than thinking about what job I want. This can be anything you want. So instead of having to settle for something, go big. Do what you wanna do and make it your last stand to show people who you are and what you wanna do. Even if that’s not where you end up in a job. If that’s what you want to do, this is your chance.