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| 'Dandelion my first boyfriend put in my hair, four-sided dice, golden peanut, shell, red sea glass, rabbit stamp, flattened penny, key to my childhood home.' |
I first met Caitlin Duennebier in 2007, when we were both art students at the London College of Communication. I liked her immediately - because she was a genuinely lovely, gentle person - and because she had one of the most beautifully unusual sensibilities I had ever seen. Her illustrations are both sweet and slightly terrifying, and her childlike drawings and paintings of unsettling characters and imaginary folk tales have been featured in places as diverse as beer labels and on e-commerce site ASOS.
One of the most intriguing things about Caitlin is her collection of found objects, and her flat in London looked like the municipal archive of a long-forgotten city of crazies. Decor included a tatty glove in a large glass frame on the wall (more on this later), several teeth, and a bunch of passport photographs she had picked up from the sidewalk. Rescued photographs of strangers were framed and displayed as though they were close family members, and small plastic figurines of cowboys and Indians were scattered in frozen scenes on top of the toilet and refrigerator. It was nothing short of magical.
Caitlin took some time out of preparing for an upcoming exhibition of her work in Boston to talk me through some of her collections - teeth, Lucky Strike cigarettes, and tiny people included.
