FIBRE ARTIST INTERVIEW | CARTOON-LIKE ABSTRACT EMBROIDERY ART BY PETER FREDERIKSEN

I came across Peter Frederiksen’s work on Instagram a while back and instantly fell in love. His embroideries are genius and completely different to everything else that’s out there at the moment. I love Peter’s combination of the graphic, explosive imagery of cartoons with the traditionally ‘feminine’ art of embroidery. The added element of abstraction (stitched scribbles and doodles) completes his work to perfection. If all this isn’t enough, he also writes short stories, here’s a link to my favourite one, it’s about the day-to-day life of a pot plant.

Peter kindly took the time to answer some of my questions for The Fiber Studio. I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I did.

I know from Instagram that you’re a cat lover, that you live in Chicago and that you make crazy impressive embroideries, but fill me in on the details – what’s your work/life situation as an artist?

All true! I live with two cats that my partner and I co-parent a dog with my brother (who lives across the street). Born and raised in the Chicago suburbs, and I’ve been in the city proper for 11-ish years. I studied as an undergrad at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) but ultimately dropped out after 2.5 years – money was an issue, and I had a hard time justifying the cost of the degree. I started working at ad agencies as an art producer, essentially advocating on behalf of artists working commercially. I’m now a partner in my own artist representation company. I help artists get work with ad agencies around the world. I work from home and my office doubles as my studio! The balance of work/artwork is pretty simple: I work until 5 and then fire up the sewing machine.

Describe your work in 10 words.

This is tough! How about “Concerning the fear of the unknown in an unsure time”.

OR, if you’re looking for descriptors:

Abstract, cartoonish, quiet, looming, angular, colorful, haphazard, funny, sad, scared. Sometimes all in one!

What was your journey to becoming an embroidery artist?

I’ve been an artist as long as I can remember, really, which is such a boring and boilerplate answer. Hahaha. I started with painting in middle school and never really stopped. At the end of high school, more than half of my days were art classes. I went to art school, and after that, I just kept making work. I painted for years until I discovered fibers, which really opened my world up.

Why embroidery? A lot of fibre artists (myself included) choose to work with this medium for its feminist associations; what’s it like as a man to work with a medium with a centuries-old history of being related to women, as ‘women’s work’? Is there a feminist aspect to your art?

In the first year at SAIC, there is a class that you’re required to take that introduces you to the basics of most mediums. It was in the sculpture designation of the class that I was introduced to working in fibers. I was familiar with Claes Oldenburg’s soft sculpture work, but I really dug into the medium and made some of my own soft sculptures. My instructor knew I was traditionally a painter, and she suggested I try embroidery as it was essentially painting/drawing. I’ve not really looked back since.

In every fibers class I took, I was either the only male or one-of-two in the class. It was always a weird thing to me! I think of art as essentially genderless, and that it’s on the artist to contribute that element to the work they make if it’s important for them to convey it. The same is hard to say for embroidery!

The history of embroidery as “women’s work” is undeniable. I’m keenly aware of this, if only because of how often I am asked this question! In those fibers classes – wherein I was often a solitary cis male voice – the practices were proudly female-identifying, and I was similarly proud to bear witness to groups of female artists working intelligently in a medium so often tossed aside as “craft,” like it’s a dirty word. While I am absolutely a feminist, I’m not sure that I’m making distinctly feminist work. I just hope that my embroidery doesn’t come off like a misappropriation of the art made by generations of strong women or female-identifying people, but rather my own take on a genre that I deeply respect and artists whom I admire. 

You’ve been working in embroidery for a long time now, how does it feel to see the recent explosion in popularity of this medium, especially on social media?

I love it! There are so many people working in the medium, and there’s such an array of styles and ways in which embroidery can be consistent in its uniqueness. That, mixed with the wildly supportive community, it’s a wonder there aren’t more people embroidering. Any opportunity for artists to come together to share and support each other is something worth praising. Of course, with Instagram and other social media, that’s become a lot easier to do. I’ve been embroidering for over ten years (just did the math), and while I’ve shared art on social media for years, only in the last couple years have I made it a focus to reach specific audiences through hashtags and community accounts. It’s an amazing way to shout into a void, but every once in a while you’ll get a note from someone that makes you want to make more. Attention as motivation!

Who are some of your favourtie fibre artists?

Jessica Campbell – she makes these incredible acrylic rugs. Love her colors. @zappafan2

Skenderi – she makes finely detailed minimal line embroideries, simple and beautiful. Totally bought one! @junaverse

Erin Riley – her tapestries are next level. I love the car crashes and the collections of sexy and mundane objects. @erinmriley

Stephanie Kelly Clark – holy shit, her houses and buildings are so perfect. There’s also a nice amount of abstraction in the way she implies landscapes. @artiststephaniekellyclark

Laura Kazaroff – there’s not much that I like more than images of bathrooms, and she is GREAT at them. They’re so intricate! @laurakazaroff

Caroline Larsen – this is a little stretch, but her paintings so closely resemble super exquisite beading that I just had to include. @caroline_larsen__

Tell us a bit about the process of creating one of your pieces, and how much time goes into the work.

With the most-recent body of work, I start with watching cartoons (as most art begins). I’m taking a lot from Golden Age Warner Brothers cartoons as of late. I’ll watch them, and if I see something that catches my eye from a design standpoint, I’ll screenshot it and save it for later. From there, I’ll consider the images that I’ve been inspired by for whatever reason, and why that image in particular is speaking to me. I’ll sketch it out and add other cartoon, design, or abstract images until I have a concept and design that work. 

After concepting, I refine the sketch onto linen and start stitching. For the last year, I’ve been working with a standard sewing machine that I altered by basically taking the presser foot off and lowering the feed teeth – as long as I engage the tension, I can move an embroidery hoop around freely.

It was SUPER intimidating at first, but holy shit I love it. The textures are pretty uniform, and everything ends up looking like a colored pencil drawing from far away; every edge is just a little soft, which adds to the whimsy of these nostalgic images. I also love how quickly these can move – I did one recently that was about 12-hours worth of work. When I was doing handwork, any piece even close to as large as these are would have taken months. That said, the majority of these pieces take about 1-2 weeks from conception to final.

Once done, I stretch the linen onto wood panels, to further reference painting. 

I see your works as partially abstract (embroidered sections that look like paint daubs or pencil scribbles), with representational elements like cartoon eyes and plants. What is this interaction between representation and abstraction all about?

Sometimes it’s hard to depict a feeling, you know? The scribbles, especially, are usually an abstract way of showing a crisis; a wrecked car with panicked circles dancing to the side, a foreboding staircase with unknowable shapes darkening the foreground. Mixed with mostly-representational images, the abstractions help me to complete the thought that the original image started.

The titles of your works suggest that there are scenes taking place in these pieces that the viewer is meant to decipher, like ‘SKIPPED A FEW TIMES’, ‘FELL THROUGH THE LIGHT’ and ‘SWEEP IT UNDER THAT RUG IF YOU CAN, how do you go about titling these works? And is there a clear message that you’re trying to get across to the viewer or are the works open to interpretation?

The titles have always been VERY important to me. Each is different – sometimes a cipher, sometimes a descriptor, and sometimes just something that I find funny. Humor has played a large role in my work, and while not every piece is necessarily funny, most have at least has an origin in comedy. I like to think that I give the titles as much thought as the image being titled. 

These pieces, in particular, are pretty straight abstractions, tho, and the titles serve to give a baseline from which to jump off. I’ve never felt comfortable with just calling something “Abstract #4” or something like that, in spite of the fact that it’s probably the most-abstract way to title an abstract image. I try to think poetically, to match the feel of the image with the feel of the words. Naturally, everything is open to interpretation; I’m probably more interested in what others feel from the work than what was intended. Unless they’re just wrong. Hahaha.

In ‘FIND ME WHEN IT’S TIME TO TALK’ (directly below) there are a group of people sitting on (correct me if I’m wrong here) the deck of a boat, surrounded by what looks to me like abstract embroidered scribbles, what’s going on in this piece?

Correct! It’s a boat!

This is from an image I took of a group of off-duty sailors on a ferry in Seattle while on a trip with my partner. It’s a very-early piece in the machine series, one where I was definitely still figuring out what I was enjoying. It felt to me as a collection of previous works, while also containing hints at what was to come. It has elements of past work, both embroidered and painted (a lot of the heavy wavy lines, scribbles, and shapes), as well as some cartoon elements that I had used in drawings and would use again in later embroideries. A sort of Rosetta Stone!

Where do you see yourself and your work in 10 years’ time?

Man, great question. Over the last ten, I’ve gone from small to large to small, color to B&W and back to color, representational to abstract to somewhere in-between. I just hope that I keep changing, because every time feels like a revelation to me, and any time you can have a revelation is a great goddamn day.

Also I’d love to be rich.

Do you have gallery representation and where can we see/buy your work?

No gallery representation, tho I’m very open to it! I regret not being more-connected in the art commerce world, and would love the opportunity, but for now you can see everything on the gram or at my website, which I seldom update.

From The Fiber Studio bookshelf:

The books pictured below are Amazon affiliate links. That means if you make a purchase on my recommendation, a small percentage of the sale will go to The Fiber Studio.