My name is Kristen McClarty and I am an artist and maker of unique and beautiful things. My home studio is in the beautiful seaside village of Kommetjie, just outside of Cape Town.
I didn’t start out here. I grew up in Zululand, surrounded by a wildness and richness of experience that made for a memorable childhood. A space and family where we grew up knowing the name of the bird calling, the spoor left by an animal and the tree in flower. Where there weren’t many shops so Mom sewed our clothes. A time when we didn’t have computers and smart phones and there wasn’t much on TV. So we learnt things. How to use tools, how to cook and bake, how to knit, embroider, quilt, crochet, sew, make our own patterns to fit. If we could make it, we did. And I have never stopped.
Although I have made countless different things, my time is now focused on printmaking – making fine art limited edition prints on paper and producing one-off botanical contact prints on natural fabrics, the latter under my textile art brand inyoni.
This brand and the adventures it takes me on, sits well with my personal values. That we should tread lightly on earth, choosing options that reduce waste. Have less things but make them special. Surround ourselves with real stuff made by hand with love and skill and patience. Revisit the old way of doing and making. Notice the small and insignificant. Celebrate the unique. This brand gives me the space to walk in nature and relearn the names that I have forgotten and experiment and test and try. And be a little more of the person I’d like to be.