Fashion designer and artist Zoe Gilbertson explores the relationship between the handmade and the digital through her embroidery work. Influenced by color interactions, vibrations, and connections between new and old, her artwork combines wool, spraypaint, and tapestry canvas to create an alternative interpretation of a traditional pastime.
“I’ve always had an interest in textiles,” admitted Gilbertson in an interview with Textile Artist. “I am a fashion designer by trade, working as a performance clothing designer and lecturer in fashion design. Fashion and textiles are interconnected, and this has led to my interest in textile art. I don’t consider myself a textile artist, although I am often defined as such. I’d prefer to be regarded as a contemporary artist who uses textile materials to create art.”
Based in Cambridge, UK, where she shares a space with her two kids and two dogs, she also works as a performance sportswear designer and fashion lecturer. “My work has evolved in many directions,” she says. “I’ve experimented with color, voids of stitching, ways of framing, methods of stitching and design processes.”
“All my work contains fond memories, usually of moments in time with family and friends that are captured within the canvas,” she says. “I can usually remember what was going on in my life at the time of stitching a particular work.”
Here some of our favorite creations of her.
