Spotlight: Erik Speer, Fiber Artist

Erik Speer started making macrame wall hangings to make a little extra money. Self-taught from YouTube and Pinterest, he explored and experimented with a variety of fiber art techniques. He is now taking his art ‘off the wall’ with his own style of fiber art.

How did you find yourself on an artist’s path? Always there? Lightbulb moment? Dragged kicking and screaming? Evolving?

I never set out to be an artist. I was actually pre-med during most of my undergraduate study and only pursued creative endeavors in my free time.

It was only after I graduated that I realized I would be most happy further exploring my creative instincts, so I enrolled in a fashion design school. I graduated from it in 1-1/2 years and started interning and taking on freelance jobs around NYC at various fashion brands.

Living in NYC you always have to be hustling and I started making macrame wall hangings in my free time to make a little extra money. I got more creative with these wall hangings and they gradually evolved into my own unique style as I began experimenting with various materials and fiber art techniques.

With the rise of social media, I started posting pictures of my pieces, which garnered widespread interest in my handiwork. Eventually it became apparent that I was on to something special and I decided to commit full time to my artwork, something I never could have initially imagined would be the case.

What different creative media do you use in your work?

Originally I was just doing basic macrame with rope and knotting. At that time, one of my interning work projects was creating large boards with different sewing techniques, yarns, fabrics, tassels and trims hanging from them that we would present to the creative director. I loved the look of these boards that had so much handwork and creative techniques and decided to recreate that look in my macrame work with different fiber art techniques woven through a rope lattice.

Initially I started with basic weaving techniques and different yarns with added tassels and fringing elements. Over time I taught myself to knit, crochet, and learned felt techniques through Pinterest and Youtube videos.

With each new wallhanging I would challenge myself to make new shapes, use a new material, or learn a new technique. It was fun to challenge myself and see what I was capable of creating.

In the beginning, I never limited myself to any particular vision of how these wallhangings would look, they simply naturally developed as I put them together. This process allowed me to find and develop my style and voice.

I still try to challenge myself in finding new wall hanging techniques and ideas, however, I am now becoming more focused on taking my artwork off the wall and seeing where else I can apply my creative visions. 

Where do you find your inspiration for your designs? 

Inspiration comes from so many different things.

In the beginning it was all inspired by the materials I had on hand and what they allowed me to create. Then that morphed into taking those materials and forming new shapes and volumes with new techniques and then those into the wallhangings.

As I was posting more on social media, people started saying my work reminded them of something found underwater on coral reefs. That made sense as I had an undergraduate degree in marine science and had spent two years traveling the world as a scuba instructor.

I quickly latched onto that idea and started to purposely create shapes and layered techniques and textures to mimic the underwater world that I had spent so much time loving and studying.

I now take trips specifically to scuba dive and look at different corals and underwater life for new inspiration. I also live in Seattle, Washington and try to enjoy the outdoors as much as possible. Most of my inspiration now comes from all of nature, especially looking at the small and intricate aspects that make up a community or organism.

I love seeing how small individual parts and pieces come together to make a community in the natural world and I try to reflect that in my work with different yarns, shapes and textures.

I

Describe your creative space.

I would love to have a dedicated studio that I could scatter all my work and creative process around in, but such in not now the case.

I am not the most organized or focused artist, and I usually have piles of yarn grouped together for certain projects and stuff lying about that is in process.

Most people would see this as completely disorganized and obstructive to the creative process. I find that it is really helpful for me though because I like to see everything out so I can imagine all the possibilities that I can play around with in my mind. I

do have a dedicated room in my house for my work, and I have to tell my partner to stay out of it because of his super type A personality. He hates “messes” and disorganization and I have come home a few times only to find that he has done me a “favor” by organizing my yarn and space, wiping my creative slate clean so to speak.

I also often work outside my dedicated work space, taking yarn and fiber with me on trips and long drives. I love working outside since it makes it feel less like work and helps bring me back to the joy of freely creating art.

Working across many different media, how do you organize all of your creative supplies? 

I do have some organization with my supplies and yarns. It’s not color coded or organized by material but I have spaces that are filled with all the different materials and I can look at most of it in one go and pick out the materials that I want to play and work with.

I have so much yarn that I have had to store it in large bins stacked in a storage room and I love going through those bins and finding materials that I completely forgot I had.

Oftentimes if I am in a rut or having a hard time finding a material that speaks to me, I will dig through these bins and really be newly inspired by some lost yarn that I had buried away and forgotten.

I hope that one day I will have a space that will allow me to have all my yarn and material out before me because I am such a visual and tactile person. Fortunately, my partner is very organized and loves to help me rotate my material and make my space as organized as I need it so that I generally know exactly what I have to work with. 

Have you found something intended for one media that works well for something else? 

I find that it is really important not to limit yourself and your materials/media to its generally intended purpose. I try to constantly be looking at things in such a way to ask “what else I could do with them?” and “what are the limits of this media?”.  

It gets really easy to imagine just one intended purpose for things that will give you the expected result. It takes a lot of time and experimentation to find new avenues of creativity for these things, but the results are often most rewarding.

Unfortunately, as I have gotten more successful I find that it is harder to explore this aspect of creation and really push the boundaries of the media. The rush to get new work out and hitting deadlines for commissions has me returning to what I know works and it doesn’t allow for the creative freedom I had when I first started.

It’s important to sit with your work and give yourself time to push your limits and expectations so that you do not grow creatively stagnant. When I feel like I’m in a rut and I am looking for inspiration for new media to incorporate into my work, my favorite place to go is Home Depot or Ace Hardware. An arts and craft store is too obvious of a place to go and doesn’t allow my brain to wonder outside of what it knows and what the materials are telling me what needs to be done with it. 

Scraps. Saver? Or be done with them? 

While I am working on a new project I save every little scrap. Oftentimes it is more so that I can look back and see what materials I used for certain parts of my work. I will often try to utilize those scraps within the piece whether it be to use them as stuffing to give a piece more volume or so as to incorporate them into a fringe to give a more wild look to the piece.

Once I completely finish a piece, I immediately clean up my workspace and discard all scraps and material. I often feel bad about this, wishing I could use every scrap piece, but I find that a new project always needs a clean fresh start.

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

I wish that I could be a person that has multiple projects going on at once as I am definitely not a multitasker and usually have to super focus on one task at a time.

I once had multiple wallhanging projects going at the same time and it just got too overwhelming for me. I got torn over which project got my attention for the day. I stressed out over not working enough on one piece, so I ended up bouncing between the projects without really getting much done well on either one.

I have found that I work much better if I focus all my time and energy on one project at a time. The only time I find I can successfully do multiple projects at once is when they are very different styles of projects. If I am working on a wallhanging and a piece of furniture, it is much easier for me to separate the two and delegate my work time between the two.

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

New works always really excite me. I

usually have a general idea of what I want the final piece to feel and look like but nothing is set in stone or sketched out. 

There is usually one focal point in a piece whether it be a block of color or a strong form or texture. The rest is visualized out from there.

I generally start thinking about the different sections and what textures or techniques will go where in a piece when I start to build the base. These pieces take several months to build so I am constantly reassessing my work and visualizing multiple layouts.

I will sometimes put in a section and after sitting with it in place for several days, realize that it doesn’t fit so I take it out and start over. I

t can be a really fun process if given the time, however, with deadlines sometimes I will rush and that often hampers the creative process. I can always look at past works and tell which ones were rushed at the end.

Deadlines are essential for me, as I could sit with one piece way too long and overthink things. I have to find the balance. 

It’s often a hard subject to discuss as most people don’t fully understand everything that goes into a creative piece. It’s one of the main reasons why I decided to sign with a gallery. I no longer have to deal with that aspect of the transaction.

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

I don’t really consider myself to have had any formal art education. I have an undergraduate degree in marine biology and I took a few elective art classes during that time. I subsequently got an associate degree in fashion design from Parsons in NYC in just a year and a half. I feel I probably learned more from the couple of elective art classes as an undergrad than my year and a half at Parsons.

All of the actual physical techniques I use to make my art I learned by watching Youtube and Pinterest videos.  

Finally, I learned a lot about the creative process from interning and working at different fashion design firms. During my time in NYC I was surrounded by people that were big in social media branding. I watched how important it was for work to be perceived and branded.

As my work started to gain traction, and I found an audience, I had to learn a lot first-hand on how the art world works. I still have so much to learn. In the meantime, I am just doing what I love to do.

What’s the best piece of advice you’ve received? 

One thing that I make sure to always remember is to do what you love. It always shows when you don’t.

I think another great piece of advice is that any critique of your work is good. If people are talking about what you do, both negatively and positively, then you are doing something right.

Good art always stirs emotion and any strong emotion is what you want. 

How has your work evolved over the years? Is there a common thread (pun intended!) across the years?  

There has always been an underlying marine theme in my work, but I never intended it in the beginning.  

I was just experimenting with yarns and fiber and I really started all of this simply as a hobby and a challenge to learn something new. As I started learning and putting all of these techniques and skills together, my art-form began to organically grow in complexity.

I really love looking back over the years at my work and seeing how it has evolved and transformed over time. There are specific pieces I can look at and see exactly when I learned a new skill or tried something new.

It all built on itself over time and it has definitely been an evolution to be what it is now. I have taken the marine theme much more literally now and use that more as a direct source of inspiration.

Moving forward, I see my work evolving into new forms. My latest transformation has been taking the wall pieces off the wall and seeing where else I can apply it. I want to continue this and see where it takes me.

What do you do to keep yourself motivated and interested in your work? 

I feel very fortunate that I was able to turn what I enjoyed and did for a hobby into a career. Rhat choice to pursue it full time has turned it into a job.

Anytime you approach something as work there is a bit more stress to it and you look at things much more critically. I find it also makes less room for creative freedom and thought. 

I believe it is so important to have other interests and hobbies outside of work to keep you grounded. I now take pottery classes, cook, hike and explore my city, which helps to reinvigorate me with more creative freedom.

Taking breaks and giving myself days off from working is really necessary to keep me motivated. Traveling and getting out of my studio space allows me to escape and revitalize my outlook on my work. I always come back with a new set of eyes and an excitement to get back to work. It is also a time I really take to look for new inspiration and ideas. 

Does your creative work come easily or do you struggle with your ideas? What obstacles (if any) do you experience when you are creating? If you do face obstacles, how do you get past them?

There is so much inspiration all around me that when it comes to my work, the ideas are constantly budding up in my mind every day.

I think I struggle most with giving myself the necessary time so as to mentally flesh out these ideas and see how they might work.

There is also the pressure of the constant need to produce new work and get it out there in the world that I often just find myself returning to tried and true ideas and techniques that have already worked for me.

I now find that I have so much interest in my work that I am not able to keep up with demand if I want to produce the quality work I expect from myself. I really try to spread out my work and not give myself tight deadlines so I have a little extra time to play and try new things for my client’s benefit.

There is this constant fear that my work will not sell and so I have to take advantage of any and all interest in my work to sustain myself financially. I don’t want to be a factory that just produces work to sell, but I want to also be creative and try new things that push my work forward.

I think many artists and creatives resonate with having to balance doing work for financial freedom versus creative freedom. I am learning that planning and blocking out time for different aspects of my work really help me with this problem.

Where can people see your work?

Most of my work is in private homes and offices. I really want to do more public work but have yet to have that opportunity.

My gallery does several large art shows every year mostly in major cities and sometimes my work can be seen there.

Currently I have a couple pieces in a show in Port Angeles, WA and I am trying to get more involved in the local art scene around Seattle, WA.

Unfortunately, my work is very time intensive, so I am lucky to get 6-8 pieces done in a year for clients, and I often don’t have much work on hand to lend to shows.

Social media has been key to getting my work out into the public eye so I am always posting any new works and giving snapshots of my life and what inspires me on my personal Instagram account

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/esspeer/?hl=en
Website: https://www.esspeer.com/