Beyond the Page: Clara Congdon

Volume 14 Sketchbook Project participant, Clara Congdon, is a textile artist and creator currently based in Montreal, Canada. Working primarily in drawing in the form of textiles and bookmaking, Clara’s works are tactile explorations of gender, media, and personal archives. Read on below to learn about her sources of inspiration and the meanings behind her complex, multi-layered works.

Tell us about yourself! 

I grew up in Ottawa, Canada, studied art at NSCAD University in Halifax, and then moved to Montreal where I’ve been living for six years now. Three years ago I quit my full-time job to focus more seriously on my art practice. My studio is the front room of my one-bedroom apartment that I share with my tiny deaf cat, Cleo. I make tactile drawings and artist’s books that explore gender, media consumption and representation, and personal archives. I’m the creator and editor of You Betcha Iris, a printed bilingual zine about local drag performers in my city. My work has been exhibited across Canada and in the United States. 

How were you first introduced to art? What medium was your first love? 

I was really privileged to have a lot of exposure to art growing up. My mom is an early childhood educator and my dad is a skilled woodworker so creativity was encouraged in my household. I got to visit the National Gallery of Canada often and had an especially great volunteer art teacher throughout primary school. For a while I thought I wanted to be a fashion designer so I was constantly drawing clothes and gluing magazine cut-outs into scrapbooks. I have a specific early memory of being inspired by the TV show Art Attack to create “big art attacks” by laying clothing and household objects on the floor into compositions that I would photograph from above. 

When did you participate in the sketchbook project? What was that process like for you? 

My good friend from art school Alex Wright got me my The Sketchbook Project Vol. 14 sketchbook as a gift. I worked on it throughout February and March of 2019. Right away I took out the paper pages and replaced them with fabric. I had recently become obsessed with a song called “Show Me Love” by Laura Mvula after hearing it on Shameless (US version), so I ended up sprinkling a lyric from it into my sketchbook a few words at a time. Other than that, in the spirit of it being a sketchbook, I didn’t want to base the project on any preconceived structure but rather use it as a judgment-free space to play around with processes and materials.

What mediums do you work in? 

So far most of my work has been textile and/or paper-based but I don’t consider any medium to be off-limits.

What are sources of inspiration for you? 

I’ve made work inspired by stories my friends tell me, music, television, movies, passages from books, the news, a donation of sequins, overheard comments, dance performances, YouTube videos, children’s books, drag... Lately I’ve been very inspired by Filipino fashion designer Carl Jan Cruz. If I’m questioning myself I just think, what would CJC do? I am constantly inspired by the tactility and possibilities of the book form, and by other people’s creative processes, no matter what creative field they work in.

Can you share a bit about the use and meaning of the text in your works? 

When I was at NSCAD I took Sandra Brownlee’s course Tactile Notebooks and the Written Word, a series of workshops that encouraged students to let haptic considerations, words and sensory experiences guide our sketchbook practices. The course shaped my entire practice in a huge way, especially the workshop called The Word Made Physical. It was an invitation to explore the potential physicality of letters, words, and language as visual elements. I am constantly drawn to artists who combine text and textile such as Tracey Emin, Louise Bourgeois, Joyce Wieland, and Anna Torma. I find it appealing in a way I haven’t yet figured out how to articulate. I am fascinated by the ways we communicate with each other and by the ways we are communicated to by the media. I love the idea of handwriting as mark making. I like when we decide for ourselves what text is worth putting down on paper or on cloth, worth making a record of, worth not omitting from history, and how one word or grouping of words can set each of our individual minds off in different directions. I’ve found that it’s not uncommon for textile people to be book people and I think there’s a special link there. 

How do textiles relate to the concepts in your work? 

I use textiles so often in my work for various reasons. Employing them in a contemporary art context calls into question what we value and who we value. Textiles symbolize care, warmth, comfort, togetherness, and community (see “tight-knit,” “the fabric of society,” etc.). They also symbolize feminized, undervalued, invisible labour. As an accessible, ubiquitous material that can nearly always be mended or reconstructed into something new, it allows me to explore my belief that art-making should not be reserved for the privileged few, my distress concerning the completely unsustainable way we consume, and the ability of people the world was not designed for to transform what they’ve been handed into something better resembling their own vision. 

Do you sketch your textile compositions first or just go right in? 

I go right in. What I love about working with textiles is that they have their own movement. They shift as you work with them. When I build textile collages I cede control to the shifting, curling, folding and tangling that naturally occurs. Approaching compositions intuitively is what makes it feel like drawing in three dimensions.

What are you currently working on? 

Since 2016, I’ve been working on a series called Calendars. The idea is that I come up with a different prompt each month, make a small square artwork each day based on that prompt, and then stitch the squares together to make a miniature quilt in the shape of a calendar. At first I used this structure to climb out of my long post-art school rut, figuring I could commit to at least a little square’s worth of artmaking once I got home from work every day. I’ve stuck with it ever since because it pushes me to come up with new ideas on a regular basis and build this odd analog archive of my life.

How have present circumstances impacted you creatively? 

The meme I have most related to through all this is “when you find out your normal daily lifestyle is called quarantine.” I’ve been grappling with feelings of isolation, disconnection and loneliness since I started spending most of my time working alone in my apartment three years ago. Late last year my proposal was accepted to develop an artist book project centered on those themes over the course of my first ever artist residency, which would have taken place this June in Spain if not for COVID. The inequalities highlighted by the crisis and the way it has already begun to radically alter the art world have forced me to think a lot about who my work is for. Living through a time when you’re not allowed to be hugged really makes you consider the consequences of our species’ evolving relationship to touch, especially when you work with an intimate, tactile medium that holds the scent of our bodies.

How can people support your work? 

Follow me on Instagram (@claracongdon) and subscribe to my monthly newsletter via my website (http://www.claracongdon.com/news-). If you have the means, you can order my drag zine You Betcha Iris (youbetchairis.com) or email me at clara.congdon@gmail.com to commission a work.