Meet the Maker: Into the Dark - In conversation with Andy Poplar

Image credit: @mendyourhead

The seasons are changing, and with them arrives our new craft and design showcase. Into the Dark brings together a collective of makers who delve into folklore, myth, and fairytales. In our Meet the Maker series, we explore the inspiration and journeys behind these beautiful works and the makers who create them.

Former advertising creative Andy Poplar uses the process of sandblasting to bring new life to vintage, iconic, and everyday objects. Through his practice, he explores the subtle connections between form, function, and emotion placing himself somewhere between artist and wordsmith. With wit and wordplay, Andy reframes the familiar, transforming context with a playful edge.

For this showcase, he has created one-of-a-kind pieces that look at the world through a darkened lens of folklore, myth, fairytale, and his fascination with the apothecary cabinet. Each piece is crafted individually in his Yorkshire studio.

Image credit: @mendyourhead

What inspires your work? 

I aim to seek out unseen connections between words and objects, creating an emotional reaction when the two come together as one.

Tell us a bit more about the inspiration for the pieces you have included in the ‘Into The Dark’ showcase.

I began by taking the title ‘Into The Dark’ as the starting of a journey into a world of fairytale and folklore. Those dark allegorical narratives that echo through our all our childhood memories - then only as we get older, reveal themselves to be metaphors for the human psyche and journeys into ourselves.

The nine pieces can be followed in order, so they mimic a descent into darkness and resolution, like the structure of fairytale.

Tell us a bit more about your practice.

Under the guise of [vinegar & brown paper] I’ve been etching new life into vintage, iconic and everyday objects for nearly 15 years. What started out as a way of slowly healing myself after a breakdown in my early thirties, has turned into a full time career and the most creatively satisfying period of my life.  

Describe your workspace.

I’m lucky enough to have two workspaces at home. An office where I do my preliminary design work and my etching studio which is a separate building in our garden. My office is like the inside of my head. Walls lined with books and every inch covered in items that have in some way spoke to me over the years. Shelves of ink bottles, notebooks, advertising tins, switches, pencils, pencil sharpeners, signs, prints, telephones, vintage watches, dials and magnifying glasses. Either there to provide inspiration or sat on my windowsill, waiting for inspiration to turn into my next piece. 

My etching studio is similar - but with more far more dust.     

Who has influenced & inspired you?

My greatest inspiration is a fellow ex-advertising creative called Alan Fletcher, whose collection ‘The Art Of Looking Sideways’ was the first time I had ever held something in my hands and realised that that was how my brain worked too. A way of seeing things. Smiles in the mind.

What is your favourite piece or design you have made?

My favourite piece lives with me in my office. It’s an old scientific display case, with a beautiful vintage metronome inside. On one side of the glass case are etched the words SELF DOUBT, on the other side is etched SELF BELIEF. 

The metronome ticks from one to the other.

SELF DOUBT / SELF BELIEF / SELF DOUBT / SELF BELIEF…