Five Minutes with Friend: Marcella Echavarria
Marcella Echavarria works alongside Polly Leonard, founder of Selvedge Magazine, to help artisanal companies develop their brand and story. As we approach our upcoming Crafting Your Brand course on Monday 7 October - Thursday 10 October 2024. We find out more about Marcella and how she honed her creative skills.
What is your first memory of a textile?
I grew up in a home filled with handmade objects and textiles in Colombia. My great-grandmother traveled the world, collecting exquisite laces and linens that became part of our everyday life. My mother, an artist, made all my clothes—baby bikinis with polka dots and intricate smocked dresses in Liberty prints for birthday parties. The table was always set with beautiful tablecloths and oversized napkins. My mother was constantly at work in her atelier, weaving, embroidering, and creating.
Can you put into words what you love about textiles?
Textiles are my passion. They are like texts, open to endless interpretations. As the closest things to our skin—our body's largest organ—they become repositories of our journeys, interests, and imagination. Textiles are traces of our life’s path and the most sensual expression of our humanity.
If you make textiles, where is your most inspiring space/place to create?
I create brands, stories, and designs. For my brand NOIR MUD SILK, my greatest inspiration comes from traveling to the source—in this case, the city of Foshan in southern China. Visiting there is like traveling back in time, witnessing how a cultural practice dating back to the Ming Dynasty has survived and thrived. Nature, the greatest designer of all, plays a fundamental role in this.
In general, nature is my constant muse—its patterns, shapes, nuances, and moods.
What has inspired you recently?
I’ve been deeply inspired by the work of Colombian artist Delcy Morelos, who recently exhibited at DIA Chelsea. For over a decade, Morelos has worked primarily with earth, creating immersive environments of geometric abstractions and dispersions. Drawing on the cosmologies of ancestral Andean and Amazonian cultures, as well as her own, Morelos explores the sustaining power of mud in its many forms—as a source of life and sustenance. For Dia Chelsea, she created two multisensory installations—Cielo Terrenal (Earthly Heaven, 2023) and El Abrazo (The Embrace, 2023).
These works converge surface and volume through monochromatic expanse and material accumulation, reorienting our understanding of land and site toward embodied forms of material and ecological knowledge. Morelos aims to cultivate moments of connection with what she calls the “intimate humidity of the earth.”
What is your most cherished textile, and why?
A mud silk tunic that my mother embroidered with infinite circles. It’s the piece of clothing I’ve worn most in my life.
Where did you learn your craft?
I studied at Brown University, taking many art courses at Rhode Island School of Design. For me, learning is a lifelong journey. I’m constantly inspired and always discovering new ways of seeing and feeling.
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