Incollect Magazine - Issue 13

Incollect Magazine 21 paper cuttings, to rock crystals, flowers, and even kitschy tourist replicas of the Eiffel Tower. “Working with resin is so creative,” she says, “things can move around inside the liquid once I’ve placed them. They can sink or float, pool or layer.” Interior designers love her resin pieces. Garcia has included Saint Lager’s resin furniture in numerous projects, among them his makeover of the Elsa Schiaparelli boutique in Paris, where he commissioned an enormous table shaped like a flower and mirrors adorned with real butterflies suspended in resin. More recently, the architect Peter Marino placed Saint Lager’s resin tables in Louis Vuitton and Christian Dior boutiques located in London, New York, Hong Kong, Tokyo, and Seoul. Saint Lager makes light fixtures, tables, chairs, mirrors, and various sculpture works, like the one installed at Charles de Gaulle airport. Design critics call her a Surrealist, but she prefers to see herself as more of a realist guided by the chance-like, alchemical nature of the art-making process. “Things happen during the creation of these pieces that are unexpected,” she says, “I don’t see that as right or wrong, it just is, so I stop and think about it and if I like what's happening, continue.” While she makes the resin pieces herself, with the aid of one assistant, bronze and aluminum furniture is produced in conjunction with a Paris- based foundry, owned by expert Italian metal caster Umberto Figini. “This kind of creation is dangerous to do on my own,” Saint Lager explains. “I don't have the equipment that is needed either; the bronze and the aluminum are heated into a liquid, and then it is poured molten hot into sand.” Much like her resin sculpture, her metallic pieces are inspired by her Fut Violet Side Table, resin inclusions, aluminum leaf finish. Unique piece, 2015. Petit Fleurs Side Tables, inclusions in resin, steel with gold leaf finish. Each piece unique, 2018.