The first time I saw the work of Caroline Kirton was while looking through the catalogue of the Fiber Art International exhibit that we were both in. I immediately loved her work with its figurative and narrative elements. She approaches her work as a subtle, simple and gorgeous drawing all about the complicated experience of being a teenager, beautifully showing its vulnerability, beauty, awkwardness, and fear. All done with a very loving eye.
What drew you to embroidery as an art form?
Probably like most people who love textiles I grew up with a Mum and Grandmother who both sewed and as long as I can remember I made cloths for my dolls and sewed presents for friends and when I was older I my own cloths. When I was at school any time we could use a creative medium of our choice I would always choose textiles it was always where I felt most comfortable it never felt like hard work it was always enjoyable. When I first started to embroider it was self taught and by hand, I liked the fact it was portable and you could sit and sew anywhere.
Are you self taught or formally trained?
I have used other art forms while studying as I did an applied art degree, but I have always been drawn to textiles and embroidery because I just love the colors, pattern and textures of fabrics and threads they are so versatile and can create a mood or feeling. I also love to used vintage fabrics because it is lovely when people tell you that they once had a dress in some material you have used. For instance in My mum’s a proper weirdo the bench is made from a 1970′s duvet cover and lots of people who have seen the picture have told me they had the same duvet when they were children. I can never pass fabrics of any kind without stopping to look at them I am always looking in charity shops just in case I might miss the perfect fabric and I never ever feel I have just the right fabric I need at the time. One of my favorite presents I have been was given was a box of cotton threads, I loved to get them out and look at them for months before I could bring myself to use them. As my children would say “what a loser”
How does the choice of using embroidery, as your medium, affect the conceptual aspect of your work?
I preferred hand embroidery for years – quite often if something needed to be sewn by machine I would get my mum to do it and I would do all the hand finishing. It wasn’t until I did my degree at university that I started to use free machine embroidery I had a tutorial with my tutor who showed be the basic principles of Free machine embroidery. I have taken a couple of short courses since then, but I am mostly self taught. I also use books and other textile artists for reference and inspiration. I think in some ways if you are self taught you can create your own style of working without being too influenced by tutors, but I also like to go on course and keep learning and to expand your knowledge and practice, its also fun to spend time with other creative people when you work alone. I would like to go a formal hand embroidery course it could act as a contrast to the work I do at the moment because I do like my drawings to be free flowing and its always good to have a challenge.
I wanted to create a sense of underlying vulnerability in the pictures, from the combination of the appliqued fabrics not always being exactly lined up to the sketchy quality of the black line I hope I have achieved this. Life is not perfect for teenagers so the imperfections created by sewing blind through the paper is also important. I make very deliberated choices in the fabrics I use to help create different moods and feeling in the pictures through pattern, color and texture.
Your work is based on the lives of your teenage children, can you talk about how you came to this body of work and how their lives inspire you?
I started this body of work when I was in my final year at university, at the time my girls were aged 15, 13 and 10. Anyone of my friends could tell you how demanding they are of my time, in particular my eldest who involves me with every minute detail of her life. This at times can be exhausting, so I was at a cross road trying to decide where to take my work when Emily had one of her many ongoing all consuming teenage crises. She had a very close friend who had moved from N.J to England four years previously, when he very suddenly found out he had to move back to the U.S. He used to spend lots of time at our house and we had become very fond of him, he only found out the day before he went back to N.J that he was going and told us two hours before he was due to leave. Unfortunately it was due to a marriage breakdown and he had no choice but to go with his Mother. He was very distressed at having to leave, and Emily was very upset on his behalf. He had settled into the U.K and made a new life and could hardly remember the old. One of the things he said to me that I will always remember was how he had no control over his life. So it was out of this situation that this body of work evolved it became a natural process to start documenting the ups and downs of the girls and their friends lives because there is always plenty of drama in my house.
It would have been difficult to have been totally involved in another subject at this time. I have always observed human nature and once my children became older I found teenagers fascinating and amusing how they can be in the depths of dispare one minute and the next they are off out to a party and you are left at home feeling emotionally wrung out.
I continue to be inspired by them all the time by the things they do and say, I am now well know for writing down all the things they say that I think are funny and amuse me I keep then on note pads and notes that I stick up around.
Can you discuss the experience of making work about youth and a time of such uncertainty while you are no longer in that phase of your life?
I think it is a hard time for young people today and they often get a hard time from the media, when in fact most teenagers are lovely and it is this that I also want to celebrate. But what makes me sad today is how children often have complicated family situations now and just have to get on with it, while at the same time trying to study for school and make choices about their futures. A lot of the teenagers, that I meet through the girls, struggle with the pressure that are put on them by society to make choices and achieve , when really they just want to be having a good time and sleeping.
What do your children and your friends think of your work?
I think the girls quite like my work, but like most teenagers they don’t show much excitement. I have to catch them in the right mood when they are not too grumpy when I want them to model for me. Then if I’m not happy with the shots I’ve got and want them to do them again I might have to wait a week for them to be in the right mood to do them again!! Their friends are much more willing models especially the boys, although they say “don’t make me look stupid!” I have just asked my thirteen year old and she said its alright which as I have said is about as much enthusiasm I get. I think they secretly like it though as they do bring their friends to see my pictures and I know they have told their teachers at school, because at parent’s evening they ask me about it..
My friends on the other hand are very supportive and quite a few of their children have been in my pictures.
Besides the obvious subject of your work how has the experience of being a mother affected your work and identity as an artist?
Being a Mother has affected my art practice in many different of ways the most practical consideration is having to be very determined and organized to get things done to meet deadlines, it would be so easy to be drawn into family life and never get things finished. When you have children you have to really want to make the time to devote to your practice. I have a studio in my home so it could be very easy to get involved with the children and not get on with work. I find it hard in the school holidays to get work done, so I usually spend this time looking into different opportunities, organizing my studio again, planning out ideas for new pieces of work and taking pictures. Luckily I miss the creative process so I can’t leave it very long before I start a new piece of work.
Time is always a big issue with children as well, I encourage my children to have hobbies and all my girls dance so I felt it was unfair to cut back on their activities just because it didn’t suit me any more so I always try to work on an imaginary two week deadline, before the real one, just in case of any problems.
Being a mother and and the maternal bond I have to my children is the most important thing in my life, but being an artist has made me look and analyze relationships in more depth, obviously mine with my children, other mothers with their children, and my children’s friendships. As an artist perhaps I dwell on peoples relationships longer than most, I used to think that most people had the same kind of relationship with their children as me, it wasn’t until my children became teenagers and lots of different children came into our life and home that I discovered that many of them had difficult home lives and were very emotionally vulnerable.
How has your work evolved since you first began working with embroidery?
When I first used embroidery it was only for embellishment, it was only when I started studying that I began to use it on a more conceptual level as a drawing tool. I like using free machine embroidery as it has a sketched line quality and it doesn’t look to formal or precise, If the line goes off my drawing and it is not perfect this doesn’t matter as life isn’t perfect either.
How did you begin to work with applique and how do you make the decisions towards what you applique and what you do not?
I began to work with applique after a workshop at university, and have been hooked on it ever since, I like the way that applique make instant changes and different materials changing the whole tone of a picture. Although the workshop was on more formal applique I never really liked working in this way and as my work was designed to be pictures the applique didn’t have to be very durable. I like it to be just loosely caught down.
Deciding what to applique and what colors and fabrics to use is the most time consuming part of my pictures and the most important. If I’m not pleased with the results it really annoys me and I have redone complete pictures before because I not happy with the color choices. Once I have drawn out my pictures I take them to a photocopy shop and they enlarge my image to the size I want it. Next I decide on the back ground material as this determines the other colors I use. Then I pin the picture and fabric and start deciding about fabric choices for the parts I’m going to applique. I will make up a couple of color palettes and then decide which one I think works best with the images theme. However there are also other criteria that decide my choices, as the pictures are about teenagers I take into consideration current fashion trends i.e colors and types of fabrics or texture.
Also I try to incorporate aspects of their personality for example in My mum’s a proper weirdo both Brad and Tom were wearing bright colors -so I wanted to reflect this in the piece. In my most recent picture Harry is wearing odd socks so I gave him odd socks in the picture. I also try to make the picture quirky by using some material in places that you wouldn’t expect to find them, to help create a sense of fun, i.e the bench in My mum’s a proper weirdo! Obviously the colors and fabric and where I use them, is very subjective, and I spend hours deliberating over the choices.
I have been thinking about your question how do I decide which bit to applique and which bits to leave out and its a a combination of trial and error because I cut out all the pieces first and lie them onto of the picture before I permanently attach them and them make the final decisions. I leave the the picture at this stage until I’m happy with my choices, sometimes I make for instance a bag out of several different fabrics I think would be ok and keep changing them around until I am happy with the result. A lot of the time it’s intuition and by leaving some parts empty its a suggestion of what could be there.
What is the next direction or step for your work?
I would like to make more of my own backgrounds for my pictures as using shop bought fabrics is often very limiting- even if the fabric is textured they don’t have much depth or tone, I have recently started painting brocade fabrics with emulsion paint and acrylics to make my own backgrounds, once painted it has a paper like quality and provides a good surface for silk screen printing. I would also like to experiment with other techniques to see what other effects I can achieve. I think creating the right background is very important as I like each one to reflect the subject of the picture. I am also going to look at different ways of incorporating text into my pictures as it is the titles are the starting point for the pictures in the first place.
Describe your studio and studio practice.
My studio is in an extension on the side of my house, it is crammed full of material, and big rolls of drawings and screen print acetates and home to my sewing machine and light box. I get so engrossed in a picture that it just gets messier and messier until the picture is finished and I attempt to tidy before I start the next one. As I need to work flat a lot of the time I open my studio doors into our family room and lay out my pictures on the floor as my studio isn’t big enough. ( much to probably everyone else’s irritation). I am saving up to buy a table that can go up and down and turn on its side when not being used, because having a big permanent table space is what I miss about university. When I screen print I hire the print tables by the hour at the university I went to.
What else do you spend your time doing?
When I am not busy with family and not working I like to keep active -my main hobbies are Yoga, and keep fit classes, my favorite is Zumba which has just come to the U.K. I also like reading but try not to get too engrossed in a book while I have a deadline or it might get forgotten. Since finishing university I also try to go to art exhibitions in London with some of my friends there. I find it important to keep seeing the work of other artists as they often inspire you own work and keep you thinking and questioning. It is also a time we spend discussing with each how our own art practice is going and encouraging and helping one another, as once out of academic study it is easy to loose sight of you work concepts .
Give us an idea of a day in the life of you.
For me a typical day starts once my children have left for school, I usually take a keep fit class or go to the gym every morning as it gets me up and motivated and out of the house then once I get back I can concentrate on answering emails, then starting some work. A couple a days a week the girls dance so work stops at 3.30 when I pick them up. On other days I work until early evening. If I am in the middle of a picture I don’t stop for weekends because it doesn’t feel like work I enjoy it so much. I still feel excited every time I finish a new picture and make all my family come and admire it whether they want to or not. One important point in finishing- whether I am physically working on a new piece or not I am always thinking about what I’m going to do next. I am always observing and jotting down ideas that I find amusing.
Until next time keep stitching!!
Joetta Maue is a full time artist primarily using photography and fibers. Her most recent work is a series of embroideries and images exploring intimacy. Joetta exhibits her work throughout the United States and internationally, and authors the art and craft blog Little Yellowbird as well as regularly contributing to the online journal Hello Craft. Joetta lives in Brooklyn, NY, with her husband, baby son, two cats, and a goldfish.
I pick up on all sorts of small comments mainly made by my girls, that I find funny and hope that other people find them funny and touching as well. I really like the sayings each group of children have they seem to change year by year.
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