"Looking back, the genesis of my practice feels less like a choice and more like a gentle, persistent calling, a search for weaving that spanned my entire life.

My initial connection to making is rooted in early memories: Saturday morning art classes and the quiet, immersive afternoons spent in my grandmother's dedicated sewing and painting room. That environment fostered a deep appreciation for the act of creation. While I initially pursued graphic design in my formal education, I quickly realised the work was too distant, too flat. It was the tactility of making that truly compelled me, leading me to redirect my studies toward interior design. The true breakthrough, however, arrived only after graduation. When the strictures of assignments and deadlines lifted, my mind was finally quiet enough to listen. That is when weaving surfaced.

My introduction into weaving was incredibly humble- a desire to make one piece for my new home. I constructed a simple frame loom from a cheap canvas stretcher, hammering nails into the top and bottom edge. That initial encounter was transfixing and world-changing. Building a surface using the inherent grid of the loom and feeling the fibres running through my hands became a daily, essential practice. It evolved from a momentary interest into an all-encompassing obsession.  

Being largely self-taught, my practice has been a sustained, personal excavation. I have felt compelled to explore the full breadth of this ancient tradition from utilitarian objects and garment construction to spinning raw fibre and researching the profound importance of weaving across different cultures, all in a constant effort to understand the true depth and quiet significance of my chosen craft.

Ultimately, being at the loom gives me a profound way to be embodied, to form an identity not through narrative, but through the material itself, allowing me to both connect with and lose myself within the fibres." - Claudia, Cloud May Studio.

What drew you to collaborate with us as our latest Artist In Residence, what connected you with our Every Line Leads to You collection? 

The opportunity to join this residency arose from a profound recognition of shared creative ground. When I look at your work and consider the intention behind it, I see a deep reverence for craftsmanship and, more importantly, authenticity. This immediate connection is what drew me in.

The thematic core of this new collection immediately connected with the central axis of my own practice: the slow process.

For me, making is an act of sustained presence. I am fundamentally a process-led artist; the material itself guides the creation, and if the work is hurried, the connection to the fundamental structure is compromised. This dedication to the slow accumulation of time is precisely what defines our shared ethos.

When I consider the intention behind Every Line Leads to You, I see an understanding that the most profound connections are built not in grand gestures, but through the meticulous gathering of tiny, shared moments. This resonates deeply with the energy that fuels my own work. Every single knot, every woven line, is a declaration of presence, a fragment of time meticulously held in tension.

The titles I choose for my work are a form of declaration- a means to distil an abstract, deeply felt moment into words. The visual storytelling is then allowed to unfold, filling in the rest of the narrative. Similarly, these new engagement pieces embody the complete life formed by fragments leading to a whole. The collaboration, then, is not merely aesthetic; it is a coming together of two practices that believe entirely in the transformative power of time, patience, and deeply felt intention.

This campaign explores the details that compose a love story - the keepsakes, memories and subtle threads that form a shared narrative. How does memory and storytelling inform your artistic process?

My titles establish the first layer of storytelling in the work, rooting the visual forms in language and individual experience. They act as a form of declaration, often found while I am immersed in reading. A partial sentence is pulled from its literary siblings to stand alone and redefine itself in relation to the visual work. This fragment becomes an attempt to capture an abstract, deeply felt moment in time through language, and allowing the visual work and the viewer to fill in the rest of the narrative.

A second layer of storytelling emerges when I step back from the completed work. The resulting sculptural forms evoke universal structures and patterns, revealing a profound kind of collective memory. This occurrence is an unconscious and persistent result of my making process, often resembling biomimicry. When I stand back, I realise that the piece inevitably echoes something I have encountered in nature.

It might be the intricate patterning along the ridges of a sea urchin shell found on the shoreline , or the unexpected, glowing landscapes revealed in the peeling bark of a tree after the rain. At other times, I see the delicate, sprawling geometry of neural connections caught in a scan of the human brain. 

This consistent evocation of the living world leads me to interpret the work through the lens of Animism. The word itself is derived from the Latin anima, meaning 'breath' with an extended meaning of spirit or soul. I use it to recognise the potential for all objects from plants and rocks to rivers and, crucially, my own woven forms, to be animated and possess a distinctive spirit.

Our engagement designs in this collection celebrate vintage-inspired details, hand-engraved details and intricate, intentional craftsmanship. How does your practice, working so heavily with line and texture, intersect with these ideas?

It is fascinating to consider the intersection of these two material disciplines. While one works in permanence and the other in flux, the underlying philosophy of a deep reverence for intricate, intentional craftsmanship is entirely shared. Art and design history are constantly informing my practice; the vintage details and precise gestures that compel me in historical works are not directly translated into my weaving, but rather become a deep part of my internal vocabulary. I am constantly absorbing this knowledge, allowing it to feed into the reservoir from which my making draws.

My practice is an immersion in the language of line and texture, and every decision is a careful balance of precision and yielding. I no longer begin a piece from a place of rigid, concise intention. Instead, intention is a delicate balancing act between the specific exploration I wish to undertake and what the fibre itself reveals to me as the piece builds. While I am deliberate, careful, and precise with the lines and texture I create, I am working in harmony with the material. The warp, for instance, becomes more prominent or quiet, depending on the thickness, colour, or density of the thread. The weft threads carry the same variances, but when they begin to interact with the warp, another spontaneous factor is introduced. Regardless of my technical knowledge, I want these material factors to organically lead me in directions I would not have conceived of before beginning the work. Both finely engraved lines in metal and the continuous threads in weaving are, ultimately, meditations on time and careful touch. My connection to your collection lies in this shared belief that slow, considered line-making creates a profound and lasting intimacy.

The experience of falling in love is at the core of this campaign. How do you translate emotions such as anticipation, intimacy and connection into physical form through your work?

The experience of falling in love is such a powerful, yet abstract, starting point for any creative endeavour.

I would say I am often contemplating how to distil such abstract feelings into a physical object. Because weaving is so labour intensive, it requires a significant period of time to create a sculptural piece. This means that I can move through the whole spectrum of emotions while I am creating the work, allowing the piece to absorb and filter that passing emotional landscape. The final form becomes a kind of emotional trace, rather than a direct, singular representation.

Of course, there are more obvious ways that I contemplate and play with feeling: a vibrant yellow gold may instinctively inspire a feeling of divinity, or a convex form folding in on itself might evoke a feeling of softness. These are all considerations I contemplate when making those crucial, first decisions in the process; the choice of thread, colour, and tension. However, I do not allow these initial intentions to direct the final path of the work. It is almost like establishing an origin point, knowing exactly where you have come from and what supports the structure, and then setting off into the unknown. The work then takes its own course, and the final shape represents the duration of that journey, holding the stillness of connection and the enduring material accumulation of time within its finished form.

When people encounter your work alongside the Every Line Leads to You collection, what feelings or reflections do you hope it evokes?

At the heart of my work is the desire to take an internal feeling and translate it into a material form that others might be able to recognise.

When I look closely at the natural world, for example, there is a moment of spontaneous recognition, a sudden surge of quiet joy or curiosity. It is that kind of gentle, internal resonance that I hope the viewer encounters when they engage with the work. We all know those rare moments- when a book, a film, or a piece of art stays with you. It doesn't leave immediately; instead, it settles into your thoughts, and you return to its textures or shapes days later. My aspiration is simply for the work to achieve that. I hope it offers a moment of lingering reflection, and perhaps a sense of wonder. If the materiality and form can incite that curiosity and encourage the viewer to return to the piece in their mind, then the dialogue between the maker, the material, and the viewer has truly begun.