WINTERBOTTOM
TEXILE ARTIST
Rikke is a Copenhagen-based textile artist. She explores how our experiences shape how we see the world using abstract shapes and colours to capture feelings that can be hard to put into words. She found her path in textile design, mixing old materials with fresh ideas. Inspired by random patterns she sees in daily life, she loves collecting scraps and giving them new life in her work. A semester in Japan was a turning point, sharpening her approach to her work. Rikke dreams of creating spaces that spark imagination and
personal connection for others.
HOW WERE INTRODUCED TO THE ART/DESIGN WORLD?
I grew up in a family with a love for art and culture - whether it was theatre, literature, music or art exhibitions - or being dragged around to churches all over the world to look at gable paintings and rooms. So it has always been part of the way I learn about and understand my world around me. I've always enjoyed using my hands and being creative, but it wasn't until after high school that I delved more seriously into it. I started on the Textile Mediator training, which was the starting point for me and my entry into textile craftsmanship. I went to college afterwards, which was my first real encounter with the world of design and design methods.
WHAT IS ESSENTIAL FOR YOUR WAY OF WORKING?
I am quite interested in phenomenology and the idea that bodily experiences reside within us and influence our consciousness and the way we encounter and understand the world. I try to create a visual language for some of the things that we carry around that we can't see or have words for. I visualize it in abstract forms, colors, compositions and material compositions, which become, as I see it, an inner system of bodily experiences.
Intuition plays an incredibly important role in the way I work. In reality, it is probably an alternation between intuition and reflection. Or to work with order and chaos - between the controlled and uncontrolled - between dualities. Some exciting and unexpected things happen when I let go of my thoughts and go with the colors and materials that come to mind. I have a thing for saving all sorts of little scraps when I work. Everything that I choose from in the process or remnants of cut-out fabric, torn paper or blobs of paint and small sketches, I save that. Then when I make a new work, I go back in the piles of scraps and find elements I want to use. So there is like always something ahead, something that I have done in the past, which comes into the new. My works are always a mixture of something new and something old.
WHAT INSPIRES YOU AND WHY?
Something that inspires me a lot is combinations of things and collecting things. It could be collecting rocks in different shapes that I think are fun to curate. It may be objects that I think are connected, which may not actually be. I am also very inspired by meetings of materials, compositions, shapes and colors, and most often those that are random. It can be objects that are randomly placed in a way in the cityscape or in a room that create a composition that I think is exciting or materials that are randomly placed next to each other that create exciting encounters, and the same with colors. Coincidences are inspiring.
IF YOU WEREN'T WORKING IN DESIGN/ART, WHAT WOULD YOU BE DOING?
When I was younger, I thought about becoming a primary school teacher, and have now also ended up teaching design and visual arts to children and young people, which I love. But if I didn't have to work with design and art, I would work with people and philosophy. I have a great curiosity about people's way of being in and understanding the world, our thoughts, experiences and differences.
WHAT IS AN IMPORTANT MILESTONE FOR YOUR WORK SO FAR?
A major milestone for my work was an exchange semester in Japan. It was a big, magical bombardment of sensory impressions and inspiration. I went to the design school in Copenhagen and it really gave me something to get away from - to wander a bit and develop myself outside the framework that was at the school. It was actually there that I made my first large paper collages and my first knitted sweaters. It was the first time that I tried to translate all the sensory impressions that just filled so much inside me - I had to get it out of my body, and that's how I channeled it, by creating these abstract collages - they became almost like some large pages from a diary brought home.
WHAT DO YOU SEE AS YOUR GREATEST STRENGHT?
I think my greatest strength is being able to work from my intuition, to make room for it to just be allowed to decide. Being able to figure out how to let go and just go with the materials and what I have around me.
HOW HAS COPENHAGEN AS ENVIROMENT HELPED SHAPE YOUR WAY OF WORKING?
Uh, I think that's actually a bit of a difficult question to answer. I don't really think that I have thought so much about a direct connection with the Copenhagen environment in relation to my way of working. But the people I've met here, the experiences I've had and the everyday life I've had here have certainly had a great impact on me and probably shaped my work in one way or another.
WHAT ARE YOUR FAVORITE PLACES TO COME IN COPENHAGEN?
I have a pretty strong relationship with Balders Plads because the square was my neighbor for almost a decade. My twenties, with all that comes with experiences big and small, has happened with that space as a navel. Now I live somewhere else in Nørrebro, where among other things I really like walking through De Gamles By. Those smaller local oases and environments that are and are emerging around the city, I quite like being in them.
WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNED ABOUT YOURSELF THROUGHT YOU WORK?
I think the most important thing I've learned about myself through my work is probably just letting go. Cultivating the exciting and liberating aspect of not being able to control everything - and making room to let things flow. It has been quite a personal process for me to work on and also started out as a very personal investigation into creating a space for myself and my own head, and finding more peace. So it probably has been and still is something I continue to learn through my work.
WHERE DO YOU DREAM OF GOING WITH YOUR WORK?
I dream of having my works exhibited and getting them out into the world, and that people can hopefully get some sensual experiences out of my works. That it can help create some new spaces or worlds, where my shapes, colors and textures can give people their own images, associations or stories. And if I'm lucky, that it can also tickle the imagination and the more intuitive, uncontrolled and abstract sides in us. And then I dream of continuing to try new things in my practice and never stop being curious.
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