London-based American artist Cecilia Charlton (1985, Corning, New York) creates embroidery and weaving that explores unusual themes in this type of craft, such as the universe, galaxies, human history and its transgression through time. The universe is interpreted by Americans through abstraction, geometric shapes and the manipulation of colors. Charlton’s work is an amazing creation of someone who tried to be a scientist, but translated his knowledge into textiles. This autumn, for the first time in Spain, he will exhibit part of his work at the Monbull space in Madrid.
Knitting is something the women of the Charlton family do regularly. They sew in the basement and Cecilia, in the middle of the three sisters, quietly remembers the precise sound of the needle through the fabric, interspersed with snippets of conversation. “I miss that hum, sometimes when I’m alone in the studio I try to imitate it with the sound of the radio,” he told EL PAÍS. Cecilia Charlton’s upstate New York childhood revolved around textiles. Her grandmother earned a master’s degree in textiles, a rare feat for a woman at the time, and her mother developed a deep interest and passion for knitting, which she pursued professionally: “They were interested in sewing, so I learned to sew from an early age. We took classes with the sewing machine and my mother designed exercises for us to improve our skills. We made things like scrunchies or bags.
However, Charlton’s immeasurable love of sewing doesn’t seem predisposed to transcend the walls of the home. Crafting was not an option for young Charlton at the time. Her father was a scientist and Cecilia was interested in that world, which is why she started her engineering degree in 2005, finishing it several years later: “When I left engineering school I didn’t know where I was going, but I knew I had to go,” she explains. Although she considers herself a math whiz, her path turned to the fine arts to finish where she started, back to embroidery, incorporating a love of science and the universe into the equation. He received a BFA in Painting from Hunter College, New York in 2015 and an MA in Painting from the Royal College of Art. in London in 2018. Because Cecilia Charlton’s embroidery is not conventional, but seeks to reach places that separate her from her own history, where anthropocentrism is not the basis of existence. That is why it embroiders universes and galaxies. To break the attachment to one’s own reality.
His sources of inspiration are as numerous as his bed book Light blue dot (A light blue dot) wrote Carl Sagan who describes the Earth thus: “Earth is a very small place in the vast cosmos. Think of the rivers of blood that those generals and emperors shed, so that, in their glory and victory, they could become temporary masters of a fraction of a point. Cecilia’s work yearns to find these answers beyond ourselves and our world.
And how do you embroider a constellation?
He uses the technique in embroidery Bargello. The name comes from the Bargello Palace in Florence, where a chair with this technique was found on its cushions. Another theory is that when the palace was a prison, the prisoners created embroideries Bargello Sell them. This technique can be found in different parts of the world, so its origin is a mystery. “What I love about working with this technique is that with relatively simple parameters, you can create very complex shapes. He Bargello It is based on three principles: dot length, grouping of dots and use of color. “Once you understand how these principles work in patterns, you can manipulate and shape existing patterns to use them in your own compositions,” explains the artist.
Charlton considers this technique ideal for various reasons, such as the linguistic relationships between fabrics and space, or the myth of the Three Laws, the three spinner sisters who weave the thread of life: “In embroidery, there is also a sense of slow accumulation: each image is created based on stitches.
Color is another protagonist of Charlton’s work to recreate a sense of energy from another world. “By mixing contrasting colors and using large gradient areas, I expect the colors to behave like telescope images of distant nebulae or galaxies,” he says.
Science and art blended together
There’s a certain preconceived notion in society about science, and art as trivial, but Charlton says there are more similarities than differences. What attracted him to engineering was the creative element and problem solving: “In that sense, scientific research is very similar to art creation: trying to find a unique voice, learning to trust your intuition and doing something different from others is comfortable. And, above all, the devotional nature of the work: even if your experiments do not yield immediate results, you must be driven by a deep passion,” says the artist.
Cecilia Charlton likes to use her work to discuss ideas about technology, as the embroidery she creates is a pixelated surface, similar to a computer screen: “Knitting is directly related to the development of computers. Humans seem to have a blind spot when it comes to technology: they rush into the future, not thinking about whether something should be done, but only about whether something can be done. Through the weaving and embroidery techniques I use, I hope to convey the value of looking back rather than always looking forward.”
