Interview with Visual artist Clare Elliot

I have the pleasure to share with you an interview done with Clare Elliot, the artist behind our upcoming collection: FEELERHEADS.

Please introduce yourself

Hi, my name is Clare Elliott and I am a visual and movement artist/designer based in London.

How would you describe your current job/career

I work on a very wide spectrum of projects that call on different skill sets including graphic design, illustration, photography, movement and event direction and visual language development.

How did get here, what previous experiences, projects, job led you to where you are now?

My life has always been about saying ‘yes!’ to the things that I love and ‘no!’ to the things that put me in a box. Not always easy but the simplest strategy that has put me where I am.
I’m always interested in challenging myself, finding different collaborations and doing things I haven’t done before. Feelerhead was one of them. However, there is always a common thread of creation involved. I love to create things that don’t already exist in the world especially if they are meaningful for people. 

What have been the biggest challenges

My biggest challenges have been finding my own voice and learning to express it. There were no artists in my family and the culture I grew up in was not particularly supportive of the arts as a genuine path to make a living. So staying true to my inner voice and persevering despite the opposition.

What have been the biggest achievements

At a professional level, being involved for many years in a ground-breaking theatre production, being part of the 2012 London Olympic Games, running my own company Channel Human that has worked with and for incredible people.. at a personal level, having an amazing daughter and daily being a mum for her.

Can you tell us more about your Feeler head project

Feelerhead is a collection of one thousand one hundred and eleven hand-drawn heads, born from a personal journey that has universal relevance. We call it a ‘new generation of emojis’. It is a project that bridges the analog and digital worlds, the internal (personal) and external (community/culture/global) ones and opens a dialogue about expressive non-verbal communication via technology that so many of us use today.

How does art help with emotions/self-expression?

I feel it is a vital channel for self-expression as most art is non-verbal. Often the things that we feel inside us are difficult to express using verbal language. They can be so much bigger than us and complex.
Using other expressive art forms can help bring those feelings out of us without having to verbally articulate them. Having a channel to bring them out of us helps us to process them.

Any tips for parents who would like to help their kids express themselves?

Give them tools. ‘Listen’ to them, observe their behaviours but don’t force them to tell you how they feel. Encourage them to draw, dance, make music write stories…

You’re a repeat Vandalkids customer, what do you like about the brand and the clothes

I fell in love with Vandalkids the moment I came to know about the brand. The ethos behind the brand is incredibly in line with everything I feel about how we should live in the world and be bringing up our kids. And the clothes are fabulous! Well made, practical yet stylish, funky and fun.

Why does it make sense to partner with Vandalkids for this projects

Because there is a synergy between what Vandal kids stands for and what Feelerhead was conceptualised to do. The main intersection is self-expression. Feelerhead was about encouraging people to create their own expressions/emojis and not rely upon the sometimes reductive ones that we use. But in a really fun and light-hearted way which I think is what VK is all about too! Having fun and being playful…that is where the magic lies!

What exciting experience will you bring to VK next pop up

We want to bring kids (and adults) into a wonderful immersive world (‘Planet Feelerhead’) where they go on a journey and get to feel, play, express and come up with their own characters based on how they feel.

What is an NFT?

An NFT stands for ‘non-fungible token’. All that means is that their is a way to make something that was created in the digital world have a ‘uniqueness’ about it. Just like a painting in the real world may have Picasso’ signed at the bottom. For digital artists this is great news as it means that their works can have a certain type of ‘value’ based on its’s originality’ that couldn’t happen before the technology to do this was created. 

We will be elaborating over the next few weeks as we share more about the collaboration, the designs and the events we will run, what NFT