We recently connected with Caitlin McCormack and have shared our conversation below.

Caitlin, appreciate you joining us today. Learning the craft is often a unique journey from every creative – we’d love to hear about your journey and if knowing what you know now, you would have done anything differently to speed up the learning process.

My grandmother taught me how to crochet when I was a kindergartener, maybe even younger than that. She would assign me crochet projects next to her on the sofa and, if she noticed a mistake, would tell me to “rip it” and begin again. I still make man, many of mistakes but she certainly embedded a sort of perfectionism in me.

I got my BFA in 2010 and almost immediately following that, my grandparents passed away within a couple months of one another. The time that passed between and following their deaths was full of lots of home care, grief, and familial tension. While grieving, I started using my grandmother’s drawers full of hooks and antique cotton string to crochet amorphous shapes of delicate material. Upon closer inspection, I noticed that with the addition of glue/starch as a stiffening agent, the material was akin to microscopic imagery of bone tissue. This felt very fitting at the time – my grandmother was a diehard crocheter and my grandfather would create hand-painted, carved wooden birds. I began working on a series of crocheted bird skeletons as an homage to the two of them. That’s how I fell into this particular fashion of working.

Aside from learning from my grandmother, what I do is entirely self-taught. I don’t reference patterns in a traditional sense. While working on a crocheted animal skeleton, I try to find a local science museum where that creature’s skeletal remains are on view. I’ll observe the bones in the round and will then draw up some sketches from memory – a lot of my work has to do with memory’s distortion of fact over time. Then I’ll break the sketch down into individual parts and will assess how many stitches out of which each part should be composed, etc of. I have learned to reverse-engineer of typical crochet patterning to better suit my needs as an artist, to make sure that the proportions of each sculpture are consistent, and so forth.

My primary obstacle lies in working with crochet as a medium. I am dedicated to it, but for a variety of misogynist, classist, racist, and ageist associations, it is not frequently taken seriously as an art form. The notion of “elevating” craft modes so that they can co-mingle with more widely venerated art forms really irks me, because it feels disrespectful towards the many marginalized folks who are associated with crochet. So, I am constantly trying to think of ways to expand on the practice so that it is challenging and fulfilling for me as an artist, while always acknowledging the myriad, diverse roots of the craft itself.

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 back background and context?

My name is Cait and I’m a Philadelphia-based textile artist. I use a self-taught process in which meticulously hand-crocheted thread forms are dredged in adhesives and foraged pigments. The resultant material is fashioned into sculptural forms inspired by folkloric and medieval botanical motifs, institutional osteological displays, science fiction, pornography, and cinematic body horror.

I have contributed sculptures to solo and group exhibitions at Elijah Wheat Showroom, The Mütter Museum, Museum Rijswijk, The Mesa Contemporary Art Museum, The Taubman Museum of Art, Hashimoto Contemporary, The Fort Wayne Museum of Art, Feinkünst Krüger, Rhodes Contemporary, Field Projects, Paradigm Gallery + Studio, Future Fair, and SPRING/BREAK Art Show in NYC.

My work has appeared in the New York Times, Juxtapoz, Hi-Fructose, Fiber Art Now, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Colossal, The Guardian, Bust Magazine, and a feature for “Articulate” with Jim Cotter on PBS.

In addition to holding teaching positions in Philadelphia at The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and Hussian College of Art and Design, I’ve completed artist residencies at ChaNorth (NY), The Peter Bullough Foundation (VA), The Wassaic Project (NY), and Byrdcliffe Artist Colony (NY). I was the recipient of a Joseph Robert Foundation grant in 2021 and received the Woodmere Art Museum’s Maurice Freed Memorial Prize in 2023.

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

I was encouraged to pursue perfectionism while learning how to crochet from my grandmother – the constant undoing of incorrect knots, slipped stitches, and so forth really fostered a stubborn, binary sense of “good” and “bad” work. As I became more and more entrenched in my current practice, I struggled early on with figuring out how to add structural volume to my work. I realized that the act of intentionally crocheting poorly – slipping stitches and creating knots on purpose – was a really great method through which to add bulk to the objects I was making. It was really difficult for me to embrace this because it contradicted everything I learned as a young crocheter, but once I was able to allow it to become a part of my mode of working, it really opened a lot of creative doors.

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

A lot of my work is inspired by memories and traumatic recollections. I use imagery of unraveling, disintegrating objects to externalize my grief and rage, so a lot of the implied experiences range from sad to kind of hideous. I guess an over-arching goal of mine, in making this work, is to exorcise some of my own demons while also (hopefully) communicating with others through the work. If I can help make someone who is struggling feel less alone or, better yet, show them that working creatively with their hands might be a valuable mode of self-expression and release, I will feel a tiny sense of accomplishment.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.caitlintmccormack.com
• Instagram: @mister_caitlin
• Facebook: Caitlin T. McCormack
• Linkedin: Caitlin McCormack
• Twitter: @mister_caitlin

Image Credits
Jaime Alvarez, Jason Chen, Rich Hogan, Caitlin McCormack