Carola van Dyke MSDC

Carola creates wall-hangings and sculptures with tiny individual floating stitches which explore her fascination with colours, textures, layers and light.

Her work is about the balance between the ephemeral and the permanent. It observes how to replicate nature with thread, both in bloom and decayed, focussing often just on a detail of the subject. This dramatic, curious approach represents nature in a delicate and vulnerable manner, with the hanging threads creating movement when walking past, keeping them alive. The layers of stitched thread are carefully built up on top of each other, and the fragility, the loose and broken threads become an important part of her work.

Her work is also associated with the growing awareness of the environment and the necessity for preservation - the story of the forgotten work done underground, the roots and the tubers, highlighting the beauty and diversity of the undergrowth.

Carola's creative approach is rooted in merging innovation and tradition through research & exploration, refining her craft skills for each of her pieces. She wishes to achieve a delicate result by pushing the boundaries of embroidery, therefore bringing a more refined and unexpected outcome.

Having devised her own methods of working by seeing things through the process of colour, she enjoys the infinite effects of many subtle hues and tones that can be explored when blending from one thread to another. By using different upper and lower threads, different thickness, textures, colours and stitch lengths, one will float off the other and they create a conversation with each other.

Natural forms are at the heart of her work: insects, wings, flowers & plants and their preservation. Beauty has always been important in her work, and she takes inspiration from her Dutch heritage: the 17th & 18th still life masters- the vanitas paintings with the falling petal and feather, the dead swan with the open wing, the exotic birds in their menagerie, and embraces the exuberance, the melodrama, the lush colours. She examine these historic sources through a contemporary lens, in pursuit of something new and unexpected. Her pieces explore themes of individuality and connections, in human life and the natural world.

Scaling up is not always the most obvious choice with intricate work, but opulent, delicate beauty is what she would like to amaze with.

Education

• 1988-1993 - BA in Textiles at St Joost, University of Fine Arts & Design, Breda, the Netherlands

Embroidery Exhibitions/ Collaborations

2024- 2025

• Collect Art Fair Feb- March 2025
• Petersfield Museum & art Gallery ‘South Downs Open’
• Sussex Contemporary, ‘Sussex 2024’
• Flower Art Museum Aalsmeer, Netherlands- ‘Blooming Melodies’
• House of Smalls, Edinburgh
• Textile Junction, Hastings
• London Craft Week with Future Icons Selects in the Bargehouse
• Affordable Art Fair NY
• Conception, Hastings

2023

• Artist residency in Normandy, Giverny/Monet Gardens
• The Affordable Art Fair – London
• The Textile Museum, Tilburg in the Netherlands
• Affordable Art Fair NY
• Made Brighton

2022

• Textile Museum Tilburg, The Netherlands
• Handmade Chelsea
• Affordable Art Fair NY
• Affordable Art Fair London

2019

• Bergdorf Goodman NY collaboration

2018

• Bergdorf Goodman NY collaboration