Collect Week: Kendall Clarke - 5 Minutes with a Friend
Kendall Clarke creates wall art and sculptures inspired by the elegance and simplicity of both traditional and contemporary Japanese crafts. Her work is defined by fine detail and a delicate, thoughtful approach to materials and form.
Through a mix of painting, mark-making, erasure, and other techniques woven into her process, she builds layered, intricate pieces that explore surface, depth, and the passage of time. She enjoys experimenting with materials, particularly paper and paper-like yarns, to push the boundaries of texture and structure.
At the core of her work is a fascination with fragility and resilience, impermanence and endurance. She is especially drawn to handwritten marks—the way their meanings fade, fragment, and disappear over time—turning them into a reflection on memory, loss, and transformation.
In today’s 5 Minutes with a Friend, we sit down with Kendall to talk about how textiles have shaped and inspired her artistic journey.
What is your first memory of textiles?
I remember the old-fashioned eiderdown my Nan would put on my bed when I stayed at her (unheated) house. It was so heavy that I would be almost unable to turn over, but it was so cosy and comforting. I also had a ‘comfort blanket’ when I was very young. It was a really soft, pink cotton blanket that I used to hold against my face while I slept. I kept it throughout my childhood, and I still have a fragment of the cloth now – though I don’t sleep with it any more.
Both these early memories are about the physicality of textiles – the feel, texture, even scent – and the comfort they bring.
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Lead Image Credit: Reductive, Kendall Clarke. Image by Peer Lindgreen