Charlotte Edey

Name: Charlotte Edey

Studio location: London

Website / social links: charlotteedey.com, @edey_

Loom type or tool preference: Jacquard

Years weaving: 4

 

 

1. How did you discover weaving and was what your greatest resource as a beginner?

I was exploring materially; I enjoyed working with ceramics and concrete but was starting to feel quite limited by the rigidity of the final objects and how they diverged from the themes in my work. I was tentatively working with embroidery when my interest in weaving was sparked by woven Andean textiles in northern Peru. These beautiful, linear narratives with panels expressing identity, ancestral belief and the minutiae of daily life through figuration and community-specific symbolism. Reflecting on these works, I began to forge connections between my folkloric exploration of identity within the wider tradition of tapestry and started working with weaving in 2017.

2. How do you define your practice – do you consider yourself an artist / craftsperson / weaver / designer / general creative or a combination of those? Is this definition important to you?

I consider myself an artist, although I don’t find the wider definition hierarchy particularly useful or interesting. My tapestry practice is collaborative with a weaving studio, which I think is why in this context the label of artist is apt. Conceptually, I respond to the wealth of cultural connotations of weaving, from the perceived value of female labour and artists of colour to the spiritual and material symbolism of tapestry.

3. Describe your first experience with weaving.

The first experience was really one of transformation. I am thankful to work with a masterful weaving studio to realise my drawings on an electronic, double-headed Jacquard loom. I’m so familiar with two-dimensional sheets of drawings and dimensionless digital layers, that seeing these processes of alteration combine to create this movable, dynamic, hybrid form completely changed the course of my practice.

Working with weaving feels like entering a dialogue with antiquity, while acknowledging the contemporary digital realm. The tactility changes my relationship with the work, having the fluidity of folding and draping, particularly when working into the tapestries with embroidery. They are the most intimate works I have made.

4. What is your creative process, from the initial idea to the finished piece? Are there specific weave structures, looms, or fibers that are important to your process?

My tapestry process I see as a linear extension of my drawing practice. I begin by creating pencil drawings at differing scales. I then scan the drawing or drawings and begin the extensive layering to create a digital collage, which I then work back into by hand. This drawing is then translated via digital jacquard loom to create the final tapestry.

I then tend to embroider with silk or rayon thread using a satin-stitch or chain-stitch technique to add to the scene on the tapestry or augment a feature within it. I sometimes embellish the tapestry by attaching freshwater pearls or couching-stitched metal chains. I have been working on a series that involves fragmenting the tapestries to make miniatures that are then framed in hand-designed walnut frames to become sculptural objects, similar to altar panels. I find the journey between dimensions - what is added, altered and even removed by these multiple processes - deeply exciting.

There are frequent references to the grid of the jacquard loom as the basis for binary code, with weavers traditionally applying operations of pattern algebra for millennia. Considering the intersection of warp and weft as individual pixels ensures an immediacy and connection between the 2D and 3D works. I enjoy the tension between handwork and the digital in my work. 

 5. Does your work have a conceptual purpose or greater meaning? If so, do you center your making around these concepts?

A lot of my work is concerned with the intersections of identity and the spiritual experience of womxn of colour. My narratives derive from magic realism, myth and folklore as modes of cultural storytelling, augmented by weaving as a vehicle. The heritage and symbolism of textile as a discourse of identity and power structures is a subject, I am deeply invested in. It informs my own exploration of identities within my background of British, Bajan and Irish.

6. Do you sell your work or make a living from weaving? If so, what does that look like and how has that affected your studio practice?

My practice is divided between commissions, editorial illustration and tapestry work, so fortunately there is a balance between my outlets. I am careful to ensure I have the space to create freely, outside of financial expectations. The tapestries and tapestry miniatures are primarily available through group and solo exhibitions.

7. Where do you find inspiration?

I read and walk a lot. Recently the work of Isabel Allende, Katherine Angel and Ocean Vuong have stuck with me. Collecting references and sentimental objects, displaying them as altar arrangements helps me articulate myself. My first lockdown was spent by the sea, with a growing collection of fragmented spiral shells and sea glass serving as visual cues.

8. What other creatives do you admire – weavers, artists, entrepreneurs – and why?

I absolutely adore the hand-woven tapestries of Deidrick Bracken and Christina Forrer, and the digitally woven collages of Kiki Smith. Christina Forrer explores contemporary tensions in her work, making the traditionally loaded medium particularly astute. Deidrick Bracken’s choice to work with cotton is powerful and haunting, collaging multiple histories in his cosmographic scenes. I find the Ghanaian Asafo Flags and Gee’s Bend quilts inspiring too.