DESIGNER PROFILE
FREE-SPIRITED CHILEAN ARTIST KATY BIELE FUSES PAINT AND THREAD IN HER ART FOR AN EXPLOSION OF COLOUR AND TEXTURE
Take a leap into the colourful world of Chilean fibre artist, Katy Biele
You could say that Chilean painter and textile artist Katy Biele is fluent in art. It has always come naturally to her to translate colourful scenes from her imagination into multi-media vistas and portraits. She began playing with colours at a young age – she vividly remembers mornings in her grandmother’s sewing studio, captivated by the threads and fabrics – making collages and drawing, painting and sewing. “It was something very normal in my family to see fabrics, paints and threads everywhere or somebody making something,” says Katy. “My mum and aunts were all very crafty – my aunt was actually an artist. I used to try and copy what they were doing.”
It put her on a path to design school in Santiago, and Katy graduated with a degree in graphic design from Diego Portales in Chile, followed up with several illustration courses. Her colourful, textured style came to her organically, as if calling directly to her. “I usually mix paint and threads,” says Katy. “I don’t use other materials, paint and thread just feel very familiar to me. I feel the paint has to be included in my embroidery work. They have a language together for me, they are part of a story, and they must go together in some pieces, otherwise there’s something incomplete and they don’t flow right for me. It’s like a conversation. They talk and they live together, they find a balance. It’s like the colours travel and talk through the textures, they talk to me and between themselves.”
Katy has always been open to this communion with colour and craft. During a period of travelling over four years, she fell in love with the textiles of southeast Asia and began to collect them. Then she had a soul-enriching experience working with refugee Pakistani embroidery artists from the Thar Desert. “Tara Devi was one amazing woman I met who made embroidery, and also all the men of the villages making the khadi fabrics,” says Katy. She was so impressed with their work, and so staggered that they weren’t more widely celebrated in the textiles world that she started a crowdfunding campaign to raise awareness and help them reach a bigger market. “I loved that project when I was living on the road,” says Katy.
“For me, it’s so inspiring to see people making things, regardless of whether other people like it or not, or whether they make money or not, it’s just their tradition and lifestyle. With no resources at all, people can create amazing things. I like that. That’s what speaks to me.”
Now living and working on the west coast of Canada, Katy shows her artwork in galleries across North America. She’s enjoyed a residency at The Ou Gallery in Duncan, Vancouver Island, and teaches classes around the world, but she’s also “pretty chill making art at home.”
“It’s like a conversation. They talk and live together, they find a balance. They talk to me and between themselves.”
Her online course - Embroidery with Watercolour
Basic Techniques - is one way admirers connect with her, as well as her Etsy shop, Creative Journeys, where she puts together kits to help stitchers unlock their inner artist. She’s currently enjoying losing herself in larger pieces of work – something she’d love to develop in the future long with incorporating more 3D elements. She also has ambitions to work with a clothing brand and make a huge piece for a public space.
The artist’s life is something that clearly brings her so much joy. “My mixed media work fills me a lot when I can find the balance of the textures,” says Katy. “I feel there’s finally a conversation between colours and shapes. I feel absolute joy when I work on a larger piece or a bigger project, as I can be more focused for a longer time.”
Katy also loves the smaller scale of her sketchbook, however. “I make some sketches mixing media, such as pastel pencil, inks and other kinds of pencil and pen. One thing takes me to the other, so that I can’t stop working – that fills me with an eternal happiness to see the result of how I can fill spaces.”
The artist’s life can also be challenging, though. “It’s a hard path to make art full-time, it can be pretty unstable and also sometimes you just don’t want to sell what you are making, you don’t want an audience. It’s just for you, to fulfill something inside your soul,” says Katy. “But you need that audience to have your art piece come to life.”
Katy enjoys unwinding with cross stitch, something she clearly defines for herself as a hobby rather than art, along with walking, cooking and reading. For her, art is a serious business. “I don’t think I ever make art to ‘have fun’ or do something with my time. It was always something beyond that, for me, trying to bring something to life from zero. I always have some idea on my mind!”
Katy’s art is authentically her, the sum of all her experiences. And every time she finishes a piece she’s enjoyed working on, she has a huge sense of satisfaction. “I can look at it for hours and I smile,” says Katy. “I feel proud of finishing something for myself, because I like it… rather than it being for somebody else.”
Visit www.katybiele.com to see more of Katy’s work and join her online course, buy kits and patterns from www.etsy.com/uk/shop/ CreativeJourneysKits, and follow her on Instagram @katybiele
“I don’t make art to ‘have fun’ or do something with my time. It’s something beyond that… it’s trying to bring something to life.”