American textile artist Cecilia Charlton resides in London where she creates hand embroidered pieces often using bargello techniques. Her work has a futuristic element grounded in the history of stitch. Cecilia describes her work as “fibre-based investigations into abstraction, form and colour with a grounding in personal experience.”

Firstly where did you grow up and where do you live now? 

I grew up in Corning, NY USA and I now live in London UK.

What is your background in textiles?

My mother is a seamstress, so I grew up sewing. She taught me and my two sisters how to sew on the machine as well as a number of other needle crafts. In particular I remember one summer when I was about 10, we were going on a road trip as a family and before leaving she gave each of us a kit to create cross-stitch samplers. We spent the whole trip working on them, and then some more time after arriving back at home.

My study in fine arts didn’t really start until 2012, when I enrolled at Hunter College in NYC. I fell in love with painting and received my BFA Painting in 2015. I then moved to London in 2016 to pursue MA Painting at the Royal College of Art. During my time at RCA, I began utilising textiles in place of paint as my primary medium. My interests remained the same – abstraction, colour, and form – but with textiles I found that there was also an element of personal history to my work which I found compelling.

What is it about textiles as an art form that appeals to you? 

So many things! Firstly, I think there is something in my DNA that causes an inherent passion for textiles. Creating in textiles goes many generations back in my family; in my studio I have a patchwork wool blanket that was made by my great-grandmother. My maternal grandmother, even though she never pursued textiles professionally, achieved an MA Textiles degree – so in that way I feel as though I am following in a family tradition. 

I also love the inherent relatability of textiles. Without textiles, humans would struggle to survive – therefore we all have a relationship to the materials whether that be conscious or unconscious. As Virginia Postrel points out in her book ‘The Fabric of Civilization’, when a technology becomes really successful it becomes so embedded into our lives that we hardly notice it anymore. This seems to be the case with textiles. They are part of every aspect of our daily lives, from bedsheets to dishcloths to bath towels to carpets to the clothing we wear. 

The materiality of textiles also is something that I am passionate about. As any artist is with their chosen medium, I love the feel of fabrics and yarns, I love working with thread and needle whether that is embroidery or quilting or crochet or darning or sewing on the machine. Textiles as a material are also interesting in comparison to paint. With paint, you can mix them together to achieve the texture and colour that you want. With textiles, their identity is fixed in a way. You can alter them in degrees, through cutting or dyeing and piecing together, but in many cases the material itself is relatively immutable. In that way it seems like a collaborative endeavour, as Anni Albers says ‘Being creative is not so much the desire to do something as the listening to that which wants to be done, the dictation of the materials’. I enjoy this aspect of textiles, rather than bending the materials to my will it feels like a partnership dependent on mutual cooperation.

How do you describe your work?

Because my projects can go in many different conceptual directions, I often describe them as fiber-based investigations into abstraction, form and colour with a grounding in personal experience. These characteristics unify most of my practice, and then I can speak with more specificity when it comes to individual works or series of works.

What stitches do you use? Is it a variation of bargello?

Yes, by and large the embroidery works I create are made using the bargello technique. I was first attracted to bargello because of its use in rendering pattern. During my first trip ever to Italy in 2017 I was enraptured by the mosaic floors found in many church sanctuaries. When I returned to my studio, I attempted to recreate them with paint, but then by chance I discovered bargello and thus began my work in textiles. I found that the bargello technique provided everything I was looking for: geometric pattern, colour, abstraction – and I began to implement bargello in much the same way that I had been creating paintings.

How do you create a piece?

I usually work intuitively, going straight into the embroidery process without planning anything ahead of time. I find the embroidery process to be very similar to drawing, so in this way I am ‘sketching’ and ‘painting’ at the same time. When a concept appears in my mind’s eye, I may do some very rudimentary sketches (this is mostly to ensure that I don’t lose the idea) but I will typically jump right into the embroidery. Sometimes this may mean tearing out areas that aren’t working but having a sense of discovery and surprise is really important to my creative process. If I were to plan everything out and then use the embroidery to execute that pre-planned composition, I think the works would lose their vitality. The funny thing about embroidery is that because the process is so slow it provides a lot of opportunity for spontaneity. Working spontaneously and having a very slow practice may seem like they would be mutually exclusive, but I find the opposite to be true. The fact that the process is so slow leaves a lot of room to consider my next move and change course when needed. While perhaps at a snail’s pace, my process feels very impulsive and instinctual.

You use wonderful colour combinations that really give the compositions a 3d effect, how do you decide which colours to use? 

I also use colours very intuitively. I love eccentric colour combinations, so I try to implement colours in surprising ways. The bargello technique often utilises gradients of a single colour which results in strong 3D effects. This is something I have always enjoyed playing around with in my own work.

Do you use a particular brand of yarn and why?

In my wool artworks, I use Appleton’s 4-ply wool tapestry yarn. I love wool! Many textiles and fibres are made from carbon-based products, but only some, such as wool, are made from renewable atmospheric carbon. When disposed of, it can be composted as wool acts like a fertiliser by slowly releasing valuable nutrients and carbon back into the soil. When used in clothing, wool garments end up being washed less often which means they last longer than garments from other materials, and less water is used during the lifetime of the garment. Wool is also thermoregulating, keeping you cool in the summer and warm in the winter – it is simply amazing as a material!

Back to my artworks, I love Appleton’s in particular because they been providing wool tapestry yarns in a range of 423 colours for 180 years, all the while basing their business in the UK. Their wool is purchased from UK farmers through the British Wool Marketing Board, which monitors everything from quality of the wool to animal welfare. The British Wool Marketing Board often purchases from small farms that wouldn’t normally attract interest from large corporate buyers, so their practices also support sustainability in this way. Appleton’s huge range of colours, the structure of their business, and the astonishing nature of wool are all what keeps me passionate about it as a material.

What inspires you?

That is a tough one, as I am inspired by such a diverse range of influences. Perhaps as a result of arriving at fine art so late – I first studied to be an engineer, and spent my younger years mostly interested in math and science – I find a lot of inspiration from the sciences. Astrophysics and astronomy inspire my works, as do belief systems such as tarot and astrology. Emma Kunz, Hilma af Klint, Agnes Martin, Madge Gill, Carmen Herrera, and Miranda July are all artists that I return to over and over. But I am also equally inspired by craft and its role in cultural histories. I suppose I am interested in areas of overlap; the overlap of rational and spiritual, of craft and fine art. Rather than seeing these as binaries I am interested in finding the ways in which they are asking the same questions.

Where do you work?

For the last two and half years I have been working from a studio in my flat. It made sense after leaving school, as textiles is a medium that is not messy and not toxic. I have come to love working at home, as I can get a lot done! It is also cozy and warm, which is important for the long, still hours that I spend embroidering.

I know this is a hard question but how long does a bigger piece take?

The largest of my works can take anywhere from 2 weeks to one month. 

What are you most proud of in your art career so far?

I am really proud of the way in which I am carrying on my family traditions, and that I arrived at it so organically after a circuitous path through many other mediums and vocations. As I have become more and more involved in textiles, I have found such strong connections with my mother and sister (my sister sews nearly all of her own clothes – and some for me!). We have regular chats around our current textile projects, sharing techniques that we are interested in learning or have learned, and it has been such an inspiration to me personally and artistically.

This gets a bit metaphysical, but my grandparents were in a car accident around the same time that I started my MA. As a result of the car accident my grandmother’s health deteriorated over the course of a few years. It was when she lost the use of her hands that she became the most disheartened. Once she was unable to sew there was a real turning point in her outlook and it was not much longer after then that she passed away. I realised recently that it was closely following her death that I began my own work in textiles – not through any conscious decision, as I described earlier my path to textiles was built on events completely unrelated to my grandmother. I can’t help but wonder if her hands saw a rebirth in mine. As the ability to sew left her hands, it appeared in my own. She mostly sewed garments and quilts, but she also created a fair number of needlepoints– and I even https://www.instagram.com/ceciliacharlton/found a bargello-style artwork that she created, all in blues and greens with her initial ‘I’ in the middle.

Do you have any advice for aspiring textile artists?

Hmm, I guess my advice would be to really keep an eye out for textiles wherever you go! There are many places that I have visited that I wish I had been paying closer attention. For example, I recently found out that there is a museum of American Coverlets just 3-hour’s drive from where my parents live – and I have never been! Because of the critical importance of textiles throughout human history, textile traditions can be found almost everywhere you look. Also, don’t hesitate to reach out to textile artists with any questions – I have found them to be incredibly passionate and generous with sharing resources, techniques, and tips. 

All artwork enquiries can be directed to cs@candidastevens.com.

https://www.instagram.com/ceciliacharlton/