Through detours and desire paths, Juliet Campfens has found her place as a miniature maker and stop motion animator. As an artist, she doesn’t chase success but curiosity and a desire for making things. For someone initially too afraid to enroll in art school, the way she now manages to embrace the uncertainty of a creative career is inspiring.
Equally inspiring is her work itself, from the sets and miniatures she makes for theater group Hotel Modern to the short stop motion film Snail Away, a kind of magical realist version of Up. Her work reflects a lesson she shares in this interview: if you leave some room for the imagination, a work will come to life.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
The first time we spoke, I simply assumed you made animated films. You noted that it wasn’t that straightforward. How exactly would you describe what you do?
Yeah, that’s a very difficult question, I think for many artists. I started as a graphic designer, that’s what I graduated as. I would say now that I specialize in making miniatures. And then I always need to add an explanation of what that means exactly.
It started with working on a very big maquette. I loved doing that, and then I thought: I’m really not cut out for working behind a computer. I actually really like making things with my hands. When you’re making little thingies, you have a quick result, because it’s so attainable. This is also something I’ve always done. As a child, I was already working on itsy-bitsy clay things. It just suits me.
I still make maquettes, and also scale models for instance. When a museum needs a scale model, I can make it. And I make sets for theater and animated films. So those are all different iterations of making miniatures.
What was that original maquette?
It was an enormous maquette of the city Frankfurt. We worked on that with around seventeen artists, fifteen by fifteen meters big. It was the city, as well as all the surrounding municipalities.
With today’s techniques, you could easily 3D print an entire maquette. But that would be pretty plain. You could also do it in a creative way. So they asked people: what’s important about the city to you? Which buildings do you immediately think of? For example, somebody said ‘this is where I buy lottery tickets every week’, which tells you so much more about how people experience the city. That’s what was used to make the maquette. And the extraordinary thing is that the entire maquette is made from stuff you can find around the house. So you see all kinds of stuff: shaving brushes, rope, pencil sharpeners, you name it. Those are all still recognizable, but that also makes the whole city look alive.
I really enjoyed being at the opening and seeing people react: “Wow, so exciting, it’s made from pencil sharpeners. And yes, the building really does look like a pencil!” You can see them recognize everything and look for their own homes. After that I thought: I don’t need to design posters anymore, this has a real impact.
How did you get involved with this project?
The project was led by Herman Helle. He’s sort of been through the same as me. He always says: “I thought I wanted to become a painter.” He had a studio in Rotterdam, in the same building as Rem Koolhaas, who was also just starting out. So one day Rem was walking down the hallway and shouted ‘who can make a maquette?’ And Herman stuck his head out the door: ‘I can, I think.’ And that’s how he started.
He then started making maquettes with old, rusty nails and stuff like that. And Rem thought that weird, creative way was pretty cool. Architectural maquettes are pretty dull, very neutral. Instead Herman started adding little details, and then found some success through that. Eventually, he was approached by the Maritime Museum in Rotterdam for a massive maquette of the city and all its harbors. And the people from Frankfurt then saw that model.
I’m also from Rotterdam, and as the deadline started approaching, they needed more and more people. Then someone thought of me. Pretty lucky.
You say that you were already working on little clay sculptures as a kid. But you did complete an academic bachelor’s degree first.
Looking back, it’s easy to find this throughline in your life, but as a kid I was always busy creating little worlds. But I was also very withdrawn as a kid and too afraid to go to an art academy. I would always say I wanted to become an illustrator, but once the moment arrived to make a decision, it was too scary.
After my bachelor’s degree I once again started panicking: ‘So what do I do with my life now? Is this the right moment to still try art school?’ Then I signed up at the very last minute, and managed to get in.
What was that like? You were of course a little older than the other students.
Yeah, that did make a difference. Although there’s a lot of people who only go to art school the second time around.
Art school is very intense. You have to be sure of yourself to survive, because everything you make is very personal, and that’s what you get judged on. That’s pretty heavy. Because it was my second degree, I approached it more seriously: ‘This is an investment. I’ll be doing this for four years, so I really have to want it. And I’m really gonna go for it.’
Why did you choose graphic design?
It might’ve been a bit of cowardice again. For instance, you also have fine art, but that’s incredibly unrestricted. So you really have to propel yourself, and get to completely decide what you want to make. I couldn’t handle that. But graphic design is very applied and outlined. During my previous bachelor’s, I had already designed a lot of posters, so it felt less like a plunge into the deep.
I do wonder why I didn’t go for animation, but at the time I hadn’t fully made the connection between little craft projects and animating. And animating still felt a lot like sitting behind your computer all the time. I also wasn’t that into narratives yet. So graphic design made sense.
So how did you eventually end up in the world of stop motion animation?
I’m still only barely in it. I’d love to do more, but the animation industry, and stop motion in particular, in the Netherlands is absolutely tiny. It’s only a couple of people. Ideally I’d like to work in an art department, but that’s really small in the Netherlands.
During the pandemic, some funds were made available for artists to develop their practice. My application got approved, and I used the money to follow a masterclass at Aardman. For some time now, they’ve had this program called Aardman Academy, and during COVID they hosted it online. So it suddenly became available for people all over the world.
And you already had this voice in you that made you decide to do it.
Yes, because I wanted to work more on my own projects with miniatures, and I couldn’t quite figure out how to make that happen. When I make something for myself, you could call it a sculpture, but it doesn’t really have a purpose. So everything can become very unrestricted, and that’s difficult for me. So if I learned how to animate, first of all that would be fun, and second of all I could maybe make my own films.
It gave me an excuse to make sets for myself, which could really be applied for something. That’s how I could bring my own worlds to life. So that seemed like a good way in. And then animating itself turned out to be super fun. It takes ages, but it’s so much fun.
I saw your short Snail Away. How did you come up with that?
It was my graduation project for Aardman.
The course lasted three months, and the first eight weeks consisted of amazing, incredibly experienced people teaching you animation at hyperspeed. In the last month, you had to work on your own project. I really wanted to make something impressive, but it had to be manageable. With big animation films – stop motion films – two seconds of animation take an entire day. So if you have a month for animating and conceiving a film, creating the set, creating your puppet, you can’t make a ten-minute film.
And the concept, I can’t really say how it happens – it just comes to me. Often on my bike or in the shower. Those moments when your brain is almost turned off, something suddenly opens up and any idea could pop in. I suddenly saw an image of a man carrying his home on his back, like a snail. Then I turned that into a little story.
But it started with that one image: the house on his back.
It appeared to me. And then I immediately thought ‘Oh shit, that’s a lot of work.’ Then I spent a week developing another idea, but I just didn’t feel the drive to make it. So after a week I decided to make the snail. Even though I had to pull all-nighters, I was gonna do the snail, because I enjoyed it more. I really had to push through, but I did it.
After that I just started sending the film to festivals. I had no idea how that worked, so it was good practice without feeling obstructed by the notion that it might be pointless. And then the film got selected for a few festivals and I won a prize. It was truly magical to see that other people also liked it.
Has that led you to new things as well? Or do you still have to wait and see?
I can’t totally say yet, but I have noticed how valuable it is to take a step in a certain direction, not knowing how it will pan out.
When I stepped away from graphic design, I was still working from home, but that became unsustainable. I can’t make things that are really big and then put them in my bedroom. So I found a studio. And then, as if the universe knew, suddenly I got all the spatial commissions. I didn’t initiate that myself, but maybe taking that step made me talk in a different way or see things I didn’t before. I don’t know how, but it went automatically. And I think the same thing will happen with animation.
I also met my boyfriend a year ago, he’s an animator. Maybe I manifested him by working on animation.
But it is something you really want to go for.
Yes, it’s just hard to get a foot in the door. A lot of people want this, and there’s not a lot of work. But yeah, I decided at some point that if I’m doing something that I want to do more of and that makes me happy, then I will keep going for it. Eventually something will come along.
I’m currently also working on building a multiplane. That’s how Disney started animating at some point. I’m trying it out, and occasionally I’ll mention that I’m working on it. Hopefully, somewhere a collaboration will take shape.
Nowadays, there are so many ways to do things easier and quicker, but I always find it so cool how much personality and character you can give your work with older techniques.
There’s so much more richness to doing it by hand. I think it’s a shame how much is done with the computer, and now AI makes everything even more flat. I’m sure it also produces great things, but I just love little human imperfections in something. It shows that it’s real, and that someone poured a lot of love into it.
A multiplane has limitations. And limitations mean you have to get creative, because you have to find solutions for everything. To me, that’s where the magic is, and that’s how artists make themselves stand out: one artist thinks of this solution, the other of that solution. That’s how it becomes unique.
I used to have a classmate in art school. When she would build something without fully knowing how, she’d say: ‘we’ll put it together with slices of ham.’ That’s also my approach: just try it out and hopefully it results in something useful. That in itself is already amazing.
It sounds great to be able to approach a project in that way.
Yeah, it’s also… I couldn’t do it any other way. I’d rather make it myself than buy it. That’s also a bit of a flaw, because I make it hard on myself. I just like building something, because that’s how you discover how things work.
Were you also like that as a child?
I was very curious, yes. I still have that urge now and then, to find out how a phone works, how a car is put together. Actually, I’d like to know that about everything.
I think it’s a shame; I used to have a car that I replaced the V-belt on myself. Then you can find out exactly what it does, what function it has, what it propels, and where all that electricity is going. But in new cars, you can’t access anything – it’s all done by a computer. I like the mechanical.
It’s the computer again…
I’m just anti-computers!
I participated in a talk the other day, where I had a whole speech about it too. I don’t know what it is, I’m anti-technology. I’m afraid it will drive away handiwork, and that’s exactly the thing I love.
Would an animation film be your dream project? Is there a clear goal you’re working towards?
The need to have goals always makes me very anxious.
I used to think that success was very important to me. Then I found some success here and there, and it didn’t really excite me that much. For instance, when receiving an award: of course it’s great, but the feeling lasts for maybe two days. After that, you start wondering again what to do next.
Success mostly gets you new opportunities. That’s important, but the idea of collecting awards – it doesn’t work like that for me. What I mainly want is to collaborate with interesting people and work on meaningful projects, in any way, shape or form. That does come at a price, but it’s very fulfilling to give myself that space and completely immerse myself in my work.
Final question. When you arrived here, you said something about the surroundings. I wonder, if you were to include it in a kind of Frankfurt maquette, how would you approach it?
What I learned from that project – and what I found so compelling – is that leaving a bit of room for interpretation and imagination, brings a work to life so much more. For the maquette, we rarely made an exact replica of a building. Rather, it was an approximation; we’d be looking at an apartment building, surrounded by all the stuff we collected, wondering which material would be the best fit. Sometimes I’d be a little McDonald’s figurine, or it could be a pile of cardboard. If you start adding a little door or windows, it becomes too much.
But when you approach it like a sketch, you leave room for the visitor to see: this is the building. It’s only a sketch, it’s just cardboard, but at the same time that’s totally the building. You can imagine the windows yourself. That’s how it comes to life. It’s like when you spill your coffee, and suddenly you see the face of Jesus in the stain: It’s only a figment, not a perfect face, but you could never draw it that way. That’s what we would do with the maquette.
When I’d cycle home at the end of the day, I would be looking at all the buildings around me and think: that’s a scissor, that’s made of cardboard, that’s a piece or mirror. I saw the entire city in that way. So if I were to look at this building from the outside, I’d just look at it for a little bit before going through my box of trinkets. Eventually I’ll find the right object, and I’ll plop in there. And then that’s what it is.
More Juliet Campfens: