We were lucky to catch up with Chris Rowley recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Chris thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. How did you learn to do what you do? Knowing what you know now, what could you have done to speed up your learning process? What skills do you think were most essential? What obstacles stood in the way of learning more?

I came to my current process through a bit of an unintentional route. When I was at grad school in Wisconsin, my wife and kids stayed back at our place in Minneapolis. I would go home for the holidays and for the summers. My studio space in Minneapolis was a small spare bedroom that wasn’t big enough to make the larger paintings I was working on at school. I needed something to work on during that time that would be appropriate for the space I had.

When I was a kid I spent some time doing latch hook rug making. Craft stores would sell pre-planned kits that have everything you need to make a small rug or pillow. Think of it as a paint-by-numbers kit for fiber art. My friends and I would challenge each other to find the goofiest or cheesiest kits to make. So, nostalgia got the better of me and I decided my adult-self needed to make some of my paintings using the latch hook process instead of traditional paint.

Once I got all the materials I needed and started working on my first piece it was clear that latch hook was not going to be effective. It didn’t have the control or finesse I was looking for. So I began researching other rug making techniques. After a number of experiments and failed approaches I finally found needle punching. It was exactly what I was looking for and I’ve been working with it for almost a decade now.

I mostly learned through internet research. There are huge, incredibly active, and incredibly passionate communities of fiber artists that are more than willing to teach people everything they can. I soaked up whatever I could and then I just got to work. There was a lot of trial and error, a lot of patience and persistence, a lot of failures and successes…but I wouldn’t change a thing about how I learned my process.

Chris, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

My play, my personality, and my artwork, since I was a kid, has always been driven by an unending curiosity. The constant and perpetual question, “What would happen if…?” One question or inquiry leading to the next and the next in a long chain of continuous investigation. I often find myself miles away from where I began and I couldn’t be more happy about that.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

As a kid, and early in my education, I believed in the mythology of the “inspired genius artist”. The person who had the natural talent to sit down in front of a canvas and make unparalleled artwork effortlessly. The truth is, natural talent is nice, but work ethic is what is really key to making work that is important and will resonate with the world outside the studio walls.

Sadly, there is no dramatic story to tell you about how I came to that conclusion. In the simplest terms, it was just time spent in my studio making my work, time spent watching other artists make their work, and time spent really listening to the people whose work I genuinely admired. It has been a slow and persistent accumulation of experience and knowledge leading me to this understanding.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

I don’t know if I can determine the most rewarding aspect of being an artist. At different times a different thing will be most rewarding…Sometimes it’s listening to someone talk about my art even though their interpretation is wildly different than my intention. Sometimes its the feeling of breaking through an obstacle or finding a solution to a problem that has been in the way for too long. Sometimes it’s how the world can completely disappear while I’m in the studio. Sometimes its about the simple act of making. Sometimes it’s looking through old projects or sketchbooks to realize an idea you had 10 years ago is exactly what you need to work on next. Sometimes its about the feeling of my hand running over the looped yarn piles of the piece I’ve spent 10 hours on that day. Sometimes its going to bed feeling the absolute defeat of a bad day in the studio knowing that the next day I’ll be back at it…not wanting to be anywhere else.

Contact Info:

• Website: http://christopher-rowley.com/
• Instagram: christopher_rowley_