Spotlight: Claire Wellesley-Smith, Textile Artist

Claire Wellesley-Smith is a textile artist, writer, and researcher. Her textile practice involves working with others, participation is central to everything she does. She works with groups to explore the ways craft and health were used together in the past, sharing contemporary experiences through the lens of an earlier generation. 

How did you get started making fiber art? Why did you choose that medium?

I grew up around women who were always making things. I can’t really remember a time when making wasn’t part of my everyday life. My mother and grandmother made a lot of our clothes when we were growing up and there were always side projects, patchwork from scraps, embroidery, and knitting in the evenings. They were excellent at making things last and at reinvention too.

I patchworked my way through my late teens and early twenties whilst studying and working outside the arts. I find textiles such a powerful communicator and connector that I’ve never really been drawn to working with other media. 

Tell us more about your daily stitch practice.

My durational textile, Stitch Journal, began in 2013. Judy Martin’s ‘Not to know but to go on’, a durational textile she completed over a three-year period was inspiring to me.

I stitched almost every day for ten years on pieces of recycled linen cloth, joining them together as I went, the piece archived in 2023 over ten metres long. It is covered in my hand stitches, mostly using threads I dye myself with plants grown at my allotment or community projects. The stitching connects multiple aspects of my practice but is mostly done surrounded by the everyday busyness of home.

When I was doing my PhD I used it as a research method, couching down loose ends of thread when I resolved an aspect of my thesis. There is something in this stitching, in the repetition involved, that allows my mind to wander, or to focus. So I find stitching in a free, improvisatory way a useful tool to explore ideas, or resolve snags or problems. 

Describe your creative space.

I work from home, in Bradford, West Yorkshire in the North of England, where I have a studio and an office – it’s an early twentieth century terraced house.

The studio is in the basement, there is a window near a light well, it’s currently a bit overgrown with shrubs from the backyard so the light is filtered through all the greenery. The original range is in there, the oven has been repurposed as my stationery cupboard and the mantle shelf holds books and cones of thread.

I have a long table and a sink for wet work. I keep work from completed projects in this room in archival storage boxes. Textile work creeps into my office too. I’m currently a research fellow at a university so I am doing a lot of writing. I’ve been working on weekly textile ‘pages’ throughout this fellowship and they are in the office along with photographs from my projects and a piece of Jacquard punch card on the wall. I like to write with textiles around me, I need the visual and tactile impetus to get words on paper. 

How often do you start a new project? Do you work actively on more than one project at a time?

I’m usually working on multiple projects. These vary in their output, some are alongside community organisations and involve working with groups of people, others are research based.

I’m currently working on a curatorial project for 2025 too. Working in this way means there are layers of work, and resources and materials connected to them, in my studio and office. Ideas for new projects tend to come through old or current projects. They emerge through conversations, need in a community, small stories connected to a place. 

Can you tell us about the inspiration and process of one of your works? How does a new work come about?

My textile practice involves working with others, participation is central to everything I do.

So if there is a need to investigate or re-story an object, local knowledge, a place connected to heritage then I start there.

An example of this is a project from 2023 working with community researchers and textile craft groups to explore the local connections of Louisa Pesel. Pesel (1870-1947) was an embroiderer and educator born in Bradford. The project dug deeper into the work she did during the First World War working with Belgian Refugees and soldiers with shellshock. She used textile craft with groups believing that ‘handicrafts can heal’. This project produced personal samplers and a publication.

The idea for a project about Pesel came through community research on a previous project where Pesel family members kept appearing in archive research. The family was involved in charitable and community work in the city for many years. The embroidery and craft connection meant I was able to link research to creative activity, my favourite way of working.

Over the last twenty years much of my work has been connected to creative health projects, sometimes with hospitals and community mental health organisations. This project allowed us to look at the ways craft and health were used together in the past, offering groups ways of sharing contemporary experiences through the lens of an earlier generation. 

Which part of the design process is your favorite? Which part is a challenge for you?

I love the research that begins any new project, this is what led me back into academic research after many years of community-based practice.

Archives and libraries play a big part in this process. I also like to map out the shape of new ideas by collecting together textiles, objects, and other ephemera – this idea is partly influenced by Twyla Tharp’s suggestions in The Creative Habit.

I like the atmosphere of collaborative spaces and find these best for inspiring new ideas, so solo studio practice is only ok in small doses for me. 

How does your formal art education help your work develop? Does it ever get in the way?

My undergraduate studies were in politics, I have a master’s degree in visual arts where I mainly focussed on my textile heritage and community based arts practices. My PhD is in cultural geography where I explored two long term textile heritage projects, one that looked at the histories of textile recycling and repair in Bradford, the other the connections to Turkey red dyeing and printing found in the landscape around a Lancashire town.

It’s been an unconventional way into an arts-based practice. My work has looked at the processes involved in industrial textile production and how these still carry memory and connection today.

So, growing a garden of dye plants is a good example of this. We have little heritage in the UK connected to natural dye production on an industrial scale, this was largely an industry using imported dyestuff. However, by experiencing the whole process from seed to fabric we have an opportunity to understand it differently.

Through being part of a growing story, nurturing and working with plants over time we can also share stories from our own histories and cultures. The processes, through material and creative practice are where the excitement is for me. 

Is there an overarching theme that connects all of your work?

I’m interested in time and how textile can transform and connect over time.

Time creeps into my studio practice, growing colour over time, making durational pieces of stitched work over periods of years.

In my projects with people, I want to interrogate the short period that begins with the Industrial Revolution and how it has impacted the communities where industrial textile production happened and how these impacts continue long after we became ‘post-industrial’. This is place-based work in the North of England.

At some stage I would like to look at parallel stories from other countries, and at the places that are contemporary industrial textile areas. 

Where can people see your work?

I post stitch work and growing projects in progress on Instagram and my website where there is also a comprehensive list of publications including my books and academic writing.

@cwellesleysmith
www.clairewellesleysmith.co.uk
https://issuu.com/cwellesleysmith
https://clairewellesleysmith.substack.com

See Claire’s books on Amazon:
Resilient Stitch
Slow Stitch

Interview posted August 2024