It’s easy to see that Callie Langham is captivated by texture. She layers up her images,  surface upon surface, enhancing their graininess and coarse weaves, to become deliciously, visually tactile. Working under the name materialsgirl, it has only been in the last year that Callie has turned to textiles design in her creative practice.

Originally training as a sculptor, Cal had worked mostly in metal. She had spent her time focusing on the surface of her figurative pieces, heating and shaping them to give a softer-looking, skin-like surface. This was a deliberate move against the more common notion of metal as something that has hard, angular shapes.

 

 

 

After achieving her Masters degree, she spent a long time without a studio of her own, and became increasingly frustrated creatively, until she happened upon Spoonflower.

“I’m not particularly computer savvy, but jumped into digital work using the software available through Spoonflower called Pic Monkey which is user-friendly and offered plenty of options for creating textures and the layering of imagery. I had, in the year or two previous to stumbling into computer design, fallen in love with Japanese art and textiles. I had become a collector of fabrics, scrolls, stencils, and other forms of art from Japan’s Edo period. I was fascinated with the meticulous process and high level of craftsmanship in every stage of creation. But most important were the Buddhist influences which infused the work with an elegant simplicity and lightness that is known in laymen’s terminology as ‘wabisabi’. I wanted to bring some of this imagery and feeling of wabisabi to life again and when I began exploring digital work it was inevitable that these influences would seep into my work.”

 

 

“Digital design was in some ways alien to me as it seemed to take me out of the tactile, sensory world of hand work and materials. I needed, even if just visually and virtually, to ‘feel’ the materials, which has led to an ongoing exploration of textures in my digital designs. It just wouldn’t seem quite ‘alive’ to me without that connection to touch and feeling.” Also part of this is that she is very interested in exploring other people’s expectations of materials. Printing texture onto fabric is one way of challenging these notions.

 

 

“I think the best advice I received for both life and personal expression is to trust my own intuitive process and let it guide me.”

Cal has lived rurally in the hill country of central Texas, outside of Austin for the last 15 years. And also drives a tractor 🙂

You can find more of her wonderfully tactile designs on Spoonflower at materialsgirl.