Carole Gelker

I am an artist interested in mixed media using textiles, alternative photography and printmaking. I create stories about my own life experiences, the powerful feelings and fantasies of children and complex relationships. Inspired by fairytales and myths I think of the images as characters acting in a play. My expressive work uses historical images, my own figures and text as metaphors of the past and present.

Reclaiming antique quilts and clothing is a current focus of my work. I tear them apart and reconstruct the pieces keeping the original stitching and adding my own needlework. I often follow the stitching made by the original woman maker. To me antique quilts and repurposed clothing hold the “story” of a woman’s life, her cultural history and creativity. These life stories in the work are often lost to history and become forgotten. It is important to me that I recreate an aspect of this utilitarian textile work.

Before making this work, I was fascinated by Victorian infant clothing worn either for christenings or in death. I thought the pieces were very beautiful. I had learned about some through the almost 250 year old history at “Foundling Hospital” in London. Women who were not able to care for their children could leave them here in a safe place. I was deeply touched by the separation of mother and child.  I felt I could be a witness to history and make work that honors the past and links to the present. So I began the project.

I then began to think more deeply about the separation as a metaphor for disconnection, failure to remember and ultimately loss that could continue for generations. The work evolved into pieces that represented the meaning of a loss of that early bond.  I began to deconstruct a coat by ripping it apart and then reassembling it with visible deterioration. I then made a dress with reclaimed materials in the style of one worn by poor children during the Victorian era. The final piece, a forgotten coat I buried in my garden for a year. Stained and decomposing, I hand stitched it back together and dipped it in beeswax. The wax allowed me to shape and create volume as if there were a lost child inside.