Sophie Smallhorn
Sophie Smallhorn is a London-based artist and consultant with a background in furniture design and making. Her design-led practice joyfully explores the relationships between color, volume and proportion through the mediums of sculpture, installation and printmaking.
In 2018, Designtex approached Sophie to collaborate on a textile design, new territory for the artist, who was drawn to the challenge of working with a consideration for repeating pattern, scale and application. The result of this collaboration, Ribbon, draws upon Sophie’s distinctive approach to color and composition to create a dynamic visual experience.
Where do you call home?
I have lived and worked in London for the past 30 years.
How would you describe your creative practice?
The mainstay of my work falls into a fine art category, however my training and background is in design. Because of this, my work remains informed by a design led way of thinking where I impose a ‘brief’, or a limitation in order to launch an idea, or a palette. In stripping back the possibilities, I can find a clarity and momentum. My practice spans many areas; a lot of speculative studio work, generating new pieces and ideas. And by contrast, I work on larger, more collaborative projects with architects or designers, much like the ‘Ribbon’ project with Designtex.
What do you keep circling back to and exploring in your work?
I am always curious about the space created between shapes when composing a piece of work, or a print. The oddness of a void, or the way in which a composition of shapes can relate to the edges of a piece of paper.
What process, materials, techniques do you use to create your artwork?
I work through ideas with collage, using printed color scraps which I collect from past projects. And I make cardboard models when thinking about sculptural pieces. I like to work with my hands, using paint in order to see the true saturation of a color. And I work as little as possible on a computer.
What studio item can you not live without?
The radio. And a set of Color-aid swatches.
What is your earliest memory of making something?
Building houses out of Lego from as early as I can remember.
What is your relationship to pattern?
As the daughter of a textile designer, I think pattern must be somewhere in my genes. And growing up in the early days of Clothkits and Marblehead Handprint gifts from my American aunt, have surely contributed to an interest in pattern and color. There feels a comfortable transition where my sculptural work explores the relationship between color, shape and proportion and for me, creating a pattern can follow this same principle.
One artwork or song you cannot get out of your head?
The work of Natalie du pasquier is never far from my head, and I often return to her for inspiration.
What are some small pleasures you have been including in your life?
Swimming in the lido on Hampstead Heath. And growing a good crop of tomatoes in the summer.
How can our clients see and learn more about your work?
Sophie Smallhorn – Works was published this year. It is a monograph which documents projects and pieces over the last 25 years.