We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Will Chatlosh a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Will thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. When did you first know you wanted to pursue a creative/artistic path professionally?
The moment I realized I wanted to pursue art honestly came from a significant rejection at a time of great change in my life, preceded by many years of developing my artistic skills primarily for fun! The primary medium I use for my artwork is crochet, and it is something I picked up from YouTube around the age of eleven as a hobby. I created stuffed animals and small gifts for family and farmers’ markets through public school, and spent a lot of my remaining time really focused on succeeding in school before making a college decision. At the same time as the beginning of the pandemic, I received my rejection letter for the school I’d really wanted to attend and had been waitlisted on for months. That rejection, paired with a time of great uncertainty in the world, I think, really pushed me to take the risk to go to a very small art school & pursue an artistic path rather than a more traditional academic path. While it was hard to know if I’d made the right decision to take a different path than nearly all of my friends at the time, I knew I wanted to create work in a field that I always really loved. After a year in college, I chose Fashion Design as my major, which helped me develop visual art skills and techniques as well as knowledge on construction of clothing (plus, I got to incorporate crochet into my school projects as much as possible). Unknown at the time of choosing my major, the program I was in featured an opportunity to study at the Fashion Institute in New York for my last year of college, which ended up being a life-changing experience I was so grateful to have. I had started an instagram page to share my small crochet projects when I was fifteen, and keeping up with my page as I began to turn my crochet art from small stuffed animals to fine art crochet pieces really assisted me in growing an online art community, as well as connections that have helped me to land some of my first career opportunities post-college, and although I don’t currently work much in the field of fashion design, the work I create now is so much stronger than before starting school, and I am so happy with the path I chose (although, it can be crazy to look back and think about how different my college decision could’ve shaped my career). I feel as though my successes thus far have come in a sort-of natural progression, and I absolutely wouldn’t have expected to be where I am today four or five years ago.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your background and context?
My name is Will Chatlosh, a 23-year-old artist from Grand Rapids, Michigan based in Brooklyn, New York. My work as an artist is primarily fiber art, and I’ve gained a lot of my audience from creating large, crocheted portraits, experimenting with color and shapes by creating faces out of stitches. In addition to crocheted portraits, I’ve done crocheted sculptures, toys, and clothing as well. I categorize my crochet work in the ‘freeform crochet’ style, but have really developed my own process for drawing, editing, planning, and crocheting any portrait from an image or idea. Having been on social media with my crochet for about ten years now, I’ve made friends with some crochet artists who create similar art, but I’d say that each of us has our own style, and I think my growth online has been from having a strong visual identity. Just two years out of college, I’ve been working hard towards turning my work into a career, and have begun to create larger-scale pieces and collaborations. The work I am most proud of currently is a community-involved crochet mural project that I began planning out and designing in November of 2025. I was invited to a world-leading fiber and craft show in Cologne, Germany this March as a featured artist, and wanted to create a piece that was bigger than just myself. The project began with a watercolor sketch from myself, and creating an instructional book for people from all over the world to come and crochet from. The piece I came up with was an under-the-ocean mural, featuring a giant school of fish that attendees could add fish to throughout the show. The book I created gave instructions for five different mix-and-match fish designs for inspiration, and I began crocheting a blue background roughly 11 ft wide by 13 ft high at the beginning of the year. Over the four-day event, the project received nearly 200 fish submissions, and it was so rewarding to watch the piece grow after many months of work.
At the show, I was invited to a different event in Chicago this May to continue the project, where I continued to receive fish submissions over two weekends. At the current moment, I’m continuing to finish the piece for it to be shown at yet another show this September, but this piece has easily been my biggest project ever, and to have hundreds of people contribute was so amazing.
How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?
As a participant in the field of art, and having developed a strong creative community, I think my favorite thing is that there isn’t a competitive nature to me in this field– so many artists are greatly motivated to support each other, whether it be online, through connections, collaborations, etc. I feel that there is a big change currently happening within the visual art world with the introduction and development of AI, and although it can be very uncomfortable to have conversations about AI in the art field, these conversations are a great way to show value to artists. It feels scary to see how AI may be able to take the jobs of artists, but I also think that those situations reveal what employers of artists actually value their work. A thriving creative ecosystem can be best maintained by starting and continuing conversations around art and its purpose in society. With all of that said, it is also so critical to get kids and young people involved with the arts. Growing up, I was affected by budget changes in school that always affected my ability to have an art classes as a kid, and having a dedicated time to play, experiment, and express yourself has so many health benefits that go beyond just someone’s talent or skill.
Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative?
Having been focused on ‘getting my name out there’ and taking many opportunities to share my work and talk to people about it at events, I’ve gotten to see a lot of reactions to my work, but I think that the biggest thing is most have no idea the time or skillset required for most of my work. The work I create today is really built upon all of my experiences and everything I’ve learned so far after about ten years of crocheting as well as four years of design coaching through school. There’s absolutely been a gradual change from my work being a hobby to applying a different level of artistic inspiration to any piece. As someone with a lot of friends who are outside of the art communities, I think a lot of the ‘non-creatives’ may struggle to interact with or understand some art, and I feel like any artist’s work is a reflection of their experiences and that their personal life is the context for their art. While my journey personally may look straightforward from looking at my social media or from an outside audience, there are so many factors that have interrupted/influenced my work and many risks I’ve taken to get to where I am now.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.wc-crochet.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wccrochet/
Image Credits
Will Chatlosh