Sarai Vardi illustrates; she draws, makes collages, collects matchboxes and vintage imagery.
She creates her work with found photos and it works really well for her. If she even uses Photoshop there’s no trace of it as her work seems to be constructed of bits of paper stuck together which just blend in seamlessly with each other. Her lines are sketchy but confident; she obviously has a clear idea of where she is going. Her characters are expressive, passionate and dynamic. Sarai looks like a tinier and sexier version of Scooby-Doo’s Velma, and she made her boyfriend a cake with Eric Cantona’s face on the icing, which is pretty awesome.
We went to visit her in Tulse Hill with bits of unwanted scrap paper and asked her to answer a couple of questions for us on them.
1. Hello. Who are you? Where do you come from?
2. How would you describe your work to someone who’s not familiar with it?
2b. What do you want to accomplish through illustration?
3: What are the best things in Tulse Hill?
3b. Draw your beer
4. Who would you like to meet?
4. Where would you rather be?
7. If you were not an artist what would you like to be doing?
7a. How do you see your illustrations?
8. Do you have a good story to share?
9. What project are you working on at the moment?
10. draw your face
Here’s what Sarai looks like in real life.
Sarai usually works in her room, on her desk that is clean and well organized. There are piles of drawings lying on the floor around the room.
Sarai drawing her beer can for us.
And here is a selection of some of her work.
This is the inside of a vinyl sleeve collection she designed titled “If Only records”. It consists of record sleeves for gigs throughout history that never happened, but should have. This one is of Sigur Ros, Amiina, Explosions In The Sky and The Mercury Program.
Like most artists Sarai has a pretty interesting room with some great stuff in it.
Sarai owns a good few matchboxes. Her friends usually give them to her and she plans to use bits of them in collages.
This thing above is a ‘print gocco’. It’s a japanese home-sized screen printing machine. Apparently most japanese houses own one of these, and it makes sweet delicate prints, but Sarai hasn’t used it yet.
This table came from her boyfriend’s mum. She produces and sells plastic flamingos for front gardens.
This cat squats in Sarai’s house everyday, coming in through the catflap. She has no idea where it comes from and were it goes when it leaves. They call it “the puss”.
This blurry picture is of a pink plastic Jesus object that tells you the future. Most of his answers include ‘hallelujah’.
Finally, to finish, here is the amazing Cantona cake. Her boyfriend is a lucky guy.