"A mobile: a small, local fête, a flower that withers away as soon as it stops"

J.P Sartre, 1942

This is the phrase that Gaëlle Pinard likes to quote when she is asked about her work. An evasive reply which is light and is left floating so that she can step aside from her work in order to let each person have the pleasure of making their own journey with her mobiles.

How did this young woman go from studying archaeology to this aspiration towards the sky, from scraping earth away, layer after layer, to air and light? A mysterious vocation...

She begins by learning about glass and continues her training as part of a measure introduced to maintain arts and crafts in the Rhône-Alpes region. She becomes passionate about the techniques used for stained-glass windows, grisaille, charcoal, meltdown-thermoforming, painting on glass.

At this time, she went back to working with shards of glass from her stained-glass window period and a world lit up in her imagination, a world made up of small characters and short stories, part-fairytale part-cartoon and of lots and lots of poetry. A world steadily balanced in the sky and in life, like The Little Prince... 

Maguelone Hédon, 2007