Zoe Gilbertson

How did the digital and traditional shape your project Sheila Bownas?

Sheila Bownas was a prolific artist and textile designer working in the 60’s and 70’s so was totally analogue in her processes. I was asked to produce some needlepoint pieces inspired by her work as part of an exhibition at Rugby Art Gallery. I applied my various methods of working to four of her designs.

Some images were simplified, redrawn digitally with filters and gradients then turned into digital stitch patterns, others were hand drawn then stitched. I enjoyed trying to interpret her work using the methods I was working with at the time. I layered spray paint almost like screen prints to create backgrounds and then worked stitch over the top. I liked introducing spray paint into the narrative as she wouldn’t have used it in her time.
In your bio, you speak about your creative journey, from fashion school and working at Adidas, living internationally, and then returning to the UK as an entrepreneur and founder for SneakArt. Was an artistic studio practice always part of your busy schedule? Or how did the creativity ebb and flow through other avenues in your career?

I’ve always been interested in art, I decided on a creative career in my teens but after doing an art foundation I took the fashion route. I must have been creatively fulfilled in my work and didn’t have the desire to create artwork until fairly recently, maybe I also didn’t have the confidence. I started artistic practise about 6 or 7 years ago, it co-incides with the time we stopped the Sneakart business, I wasn’t doing much design work and a lot of my time was taken up with young children. I suppose I was trying to find a new creative outlet without properly considering what I was doing. I can’t imagine not creating artwork now.

I’m interviewing you from the San Francisco Bay Area, a hub of technology, entrepreneurship, and a thriving art culture. Over the years, there has been a tension between the start-up culture and artist run spaces, primarily around inequality and limited space. How in your life that these two careers co-existed? What do you think can be learned from their similarities or differences?

I think the two are quite similar in the aim to create something new and different or change the status quo. I suspect a major difference might be the desire to make money. The structure and focus of entrepreneurship and technology is often financial whereas you do not go into art if your main aim is to make a good living. I guess artists will always have the moral high ground if it came to a stand off!

When I founded Sneakart (a sneaker customisation brand) with my husband who is a footwear designer, I really enjoyed the energy and excitement behind being a startup. I loved learning about running a business, dealing with distributors, making deals, selling the product and raising finance but ultimately we were not cut throat enough to see it through. If we wanted the business to succeed in a big way, we would have compromised our product and integrity and we were not interested in doing that. It’s not a right or wrong situation but because we had early venture capital investment we were taken down a path of fast growth that was not really compatible with our aims. Growing organically would have been much more appropriate but being designers and new to business we didn’t know that. ​
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I think as a designer and an artist you will always have that tension between making a product how you want it and making something that will sell, it’s really down to your personal drive and desires in life as to how far you are willing to compromise. There is no right or wrong path but your progression will depend on what you personally are comfortable with.

In your most recent work, I see that you use spray paint on canvas as a way to incorporate a layering of colors and textures in your pieces. How did this develop? Is it meant to reference street art and it’s impact on our fashion industry?

Your inferred reference is serendipitous and could form an interesting angle to explore, I actually use spray paint because it adheres nicely to the canvas and speeds up my process. I also like the texture it creates and the fact that part of the canvas will be visible. I have plans for future work that will develop this further.

​Street art influenced me a little as a sportswear designer but it’s never been a great passion. I came to use spray paint  after many experiments using different materials. In fact, I have to give credit to an artist friend, Isabelle Burnell who suggested trying it. I would love to have some lessons in using it from an expert as I think it’s a real skill, I have much to learn.

​Scale seems to be something that is dictated by space and time, if you were able to break this barrier, what would you make?

I’d like to make larger, more structural pieces built on angular frames to create 3D forms, still using stitch as the application of colour. I love the vibrant, 3D, sculptural, mixed media work that a lot of young US artists are making, I feel my work would be more at home in major US coastal cities.

​I love a lot of US artists work, particularly Hilary White, Christina Camacho, Sean Newport, Erin O’Keefe and Allison Reimus to name a few, they push boundaries with colour and the application of their craft. I’m going to experiment with new work on a small scale at first and see what happens, it may involve a different process to make it happen.