Meet Louisa Dunn | Artist & Textile Designer

We had the good fortune of connecting with Louisa Dunn and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Louisa, we’d love to hear what makes you happy.
Creative community. I am really fortunate to be surrounded by a group of female creative entrepreneurs and being able to share our thoughts and work with each other on a day to day basis. Their encouragement is the best. Last fall I started hosting collage workshops to hopefully connect with some of my online community and share my collage practice with them – as well as to create a space where new friendships can be formed. It’s been so inspiring to me to see what each person from the workshop creates and how it fills up a creative part of their soul that they did not believe they had!

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
I’m a textile designer and mixed-media artist living & creating in Charleston, South Carolina USA. With a background in textiles, I design with a keen sensitivity to color and shape interactions with sewing, collage and drawing. My simplistic and unique floral shapes are filled with color sensibility and spatial awareness.

When I was in college at SCAD, a big part of each class we took was personally engaging in a daily practice each day – and sharing that in to the class at the end of every week. This practice was self directed, and was supposed to be an hour or so of exploration/play/meditation each day that was not related directly to your thesis, but was creatively helpful. In December of 2019 I did a study with SCAD of indigenous textiles all over Japan for about 3 weeks. On this trip we were still expected to carry out a daily practice, and this is when I really fell in love with collage. Being on the move, it was so much more seamless for me to collect things and cut and paste them than to get my paints out. I collected vintage photographs and used papers we dyed and really became connected to and engaged with this practice of arranging space. While I was in Tokyko I saw an exhibition of Miña Perhonen’s work and how they explored textile repeats on a large scale through collage with paper and tape and it truly changed the way I thought about design forever.

I graduated SCAD in May of 2020 and shortly after moved to Charleston to work as a textile designer and studio assistant for Lulie Wallace Art, where I had interned several years before. I absolutely love working there and designing as a part of a team. Although I graduated, moved, and began working in the peak of the pandemic, the transition was pretty seamless. I credit this to the kindness and warmth of the people I work with, but also to making the effort to keep up with them in the years since I interned! That is my biggest advice and encouragement to anyone who interns with us is to always stay connected with people and nurture those relationships, because you never know when you may be in the same place again!

Outside of work, I have continued my collage practice and started creating a series of flowers on paper. When life gets busy and I don’t want to be creative, I can get it out and clean it up within five minutes and it’s hard to think of a reason not too. It’s a very forgiving medium to play with color and shape, and stitching into them provides the finishing touch. I find that when I’m creating, I’m the best version of myself. It means a lot to me that people have connected with these works and have supported them through buying them on my website or commissioning pieces from me. I have so many ideas to put on paper and I’m so grateful for the outlet to do so!

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
Charleston is such a fun place to visit, and the best way to travel is on foot so you can experience all of the beauty of the city and historic architecture!

My favorite spot in Charleston is Baba’s, and I live dangerously close! It’s a neighborhood European style café that is my go to for morning matcha and breakfast tacos, an insanely good pickled shrimp salad at lunch, and the perfect place to catch up with friends post work over a spritz. A few other favorite restaurants are Xiao Bao Biscuit, Basic Kitchen, Renzo, and Chez Nous for when I’m feeling fancy. For desert, I love Off Track Ice Cream – they make regular and vegan ice cream with local ingredients and it’s the best. A new spot that opened this year is the natural wine bar Bar Rollins that was opened by some friends of mine. It’s one of my favorite places to go with friends and get a glass of wine and snacks and truly feels like home.

If you’re looking for a break from eating, or the heat, go to the Gibbes Museum of Art. They have an incredible permanent collection, a lovely collection of work of Southern artists, always an interesting rotating exhibition. When it’s warm out, I head to Sullivan’s Island to go to the beach and read with friends or alone. Living twenty minutes from the beach is true luxury.

One of my favorite stores here is called Worthwhile. They carry independent clothing and jewelry designers and it’s one of the most expertly curated stores I’ve ever been in. It’s also a great place to pick up little gifts like a John Derian puzzle or some Aesop skincare. Down the road is Buxton Books which is a favorite bookstore of mine! Charleston has really great options for shopping local and supporting the community and I love that about living here.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
My former Fibers professors at the Savannah College of Art and Design where I attended undergrad. These women are my biggest cheerleaders and helped me discover parts of myself that I did not know existed. The care, attention, patience, and tough love they showed me for four years in college truly shaped me into the person and artist I am today and I could not be more grateful for them!

Website: https://www.louisadunn.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/louisacatherined/

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/louisa.dunn.3

Image Credits
Lizzy Rollins Gabriela Gomez