Caroline Kaufman: Inside Her Brooklyn Home
Caroline Kaufman is a textile designer with a BFA in Fashion Design from Pratt Institute. She is passionate about color combinations, plants, and books. Also, she is extremely kind. I mean the type of kind where you want to skip the small talk and share your life stories with each other (which we did). On this particular morning, she was excited about that day’s New York Times issue, which featured a curated list of artists and their stories of quarantine. “What 20-something-year-old was behind this? They need to give this person a raise,” she marveled. Here is a peek inside her Brooklyn apartment, her creative process, and her human experience.
Photography by Lauren Daccache
MO: Where are you from? How did you get started as an artist?
CK: I’m originally from wild and wonderful West Virginia. I’ve been making things my whole life. I’ve always had a simmering imagination and clear understanding of my creative identity. I don’t think there is a start date. I look back at my childhood artistic endeavors with a lot of sweetness. I used to sell crafts at fairs with my sisters. I was constantly drawing: in class, on the backs of envelopes, during ballet rehearsal, in the car. Making art was the most fun/interesting/relaxing thing to me in the world and still is.
Why do you create? What gets you going?
Creating art allows me reflect and process all the many facets of being human. Color gets me going. This year I have been so into the color rust and the color green. Rust makes me feel grounded and a cool green makes me feel energy.
Why textiles?
I love how much variation there can be with color when you apply it into different textures. I get endless inspiration from my materials, fabric and yarn. I love creating art that brushes shoulders with design and functionality. Not to be abstract, but textiles are magic like that: its like is it a sweater or is it a sculpture? Is it a rug or is it a painting?
What is your creative process like?
I make myself a nice breakfast and a coffee. I like to write or paint abstractly to warm up my ideas. When I’m working with textiles I rarely sketch. I usually lay out my materials and start with a color that represents how i’m feeling. I think of art in a spiritual, mystical way. It’s bigger than me and i’m simply a vessel showing up to put the ideas down on canvas. I want the work to tell me what it’s going to be as I make it.
What was the hardest part of staying inspired in quarantine, and how did you manage?
Inspiration is a feeling that I don’t have a hard time accessing. Feelings of loneliness, longing, uneasiness, growth, fear of the unknown are all feelings that I can only process by making art. So, given that quarantine included all of those things, I actually made so much work. I’m very gentile with my creativity, which I often think about in a personified way. I allow myself to follow my creative impulses and make personal projects that aren't related to my professional practice. Lately, I have been so inspired in my little Brooklyn apartment. There was a period of quarantine where I started impulsively making things for my home: covering every light switch outlet with polymer clay, painting furniture, and dreaming up designs for rugs, chairs, and lighting.
What do you struggle with? (could be with art or in general)
Haha now we are talking! I struggle with nostalgia. I romanticize a lot of my memories because it feels comforting. I think about heartbreak and the people i’ve loved who are no longer in my life, almost every day on a loop. I struggle with waking up early. I get overwhelmed easily when I have a big to do list. My hourly mantra is ‘one thing at a time’ which is the worlds simplest phrase yet works wonders.
What are your hopes? Whether for your creative career or for the future?
For my personal creative career: I really hope to have a solo show this year. I hope we can all safely gather in a space and drink wine and hug and that when we talk about Zoom it’s in the past tense. I also hope to move into a new studio with big windows. Studio space with natural light in New York City is a huge luxury.
For the future in general: I hope all of our current systems and industries become more equal, just, and inclusive for disenfranchised folks. I don't see that happening as long as we worship capitalism. I hope white people can stop oppressing everyone else, specifically black and indigenous people. I hope we stop destroying the environment. For my Brooklyn artist community, I hope that all the evil real estate developers that get tax incentives to have empty buildings and storefronts loose their tax cuts, so that artists and small businesses can afford to grow and rebuild in NYC. I hope for collective health and safety. For more CO-OPs. For political reparations. For fully funded studio programs, workspaces, and nurturing community spaces.
Anything else you want to share?
The other day I spontaneously went to go look at a Brooklyn studio space that was up for rent. It had hardwood floors, brick walls, ceiling beams, and 10 ft tall factory windows. An inspired workspace. The space was quickly claimed, but the deep excitement and readiness that I feel to grow my studio remains. In order to take a big leap, like growing a studio on an artist budget, requires some manifestation. So I will put it out there….if anyone knows of an affordable, light filled inspired work space, my E-mail is open!
Learn more about Caroline and her work here.
