Old scraps become new creations at hands of this KC area textile artist

A kitchen towel with a threadbare spot could become a canvas for your own work of art. That’s how artist Hadley Clark approaches reinventing and refurbishing textiles. She’ll be doing a workshop at the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art on Thursday, Sept. 25.

Clark doesn’t define herself as making sustainable art, even though most of what she does involves repurposing existing materials. That process actually came about out of necessity, years ago when she had her own clothing store.

“I got to a point in my store where I couldn’t afford to buy more fabric. So, I had to use what was on my floor of my studio to piece together to make more garments,” she said.

Now, it’s inherent in her style.

“It wasn’t a conceptual idea of like, ‘I want to get into mending.’ It was more like I didn’t have resources to buy new nice fabric, so I had to use other people’s waste to make garments that people would have to mend,” she said.

She enjoys when people send her photos of clothing she’s made that they’ve mended in their own way.

Ever since she was a teenager, Clark has been transforming thrifted garments, applying skills she learned from her mom, who made her clothes, and her grandmas and great-grandmas, who knit all her sweaters.

“I think there’s just something innate in me to have ownership over the fiber that’s on my body,” she said.

She really dived into sewing techniques in 2007. After going through cancer treatment, then being dumped by her then-fiancé, she decided to get a clean slate and left to study in Paris for four years.

“In the first couple months, I didn’t have a lot of friends, so I was just by myself. I was just kind of absorbing the city and merged with studio time and studio practice and new skills. I just kind of probably like found a big part of who I was that was always in there, but my identity was about being somebody’s girlfriend,” she said.

Her current exhibition downtown at Studios Inc. features a variety of garments made from curtains, hotel bedsheets and more. The show is a culmination of a three-year residency at that location.

That idea of repairing or reinventing materials also appears in the classes she teaches both to the general public and to students at places like the Kansas City Art Institute.

“My job is transformation—transformation of the way I understand what’s in front of me, the way my hands work with material to transform it into a new story. That’s how I think about the mending practices. … I really encourage people to think about what they’re doing with things that already exist as a way to transform them, tell a new story and put ownership over how they carry themselves through the day,” Clark said.

When she teaches a class, it’s about more than just art or sewing.

“Ultimately, it’s where I’ve really found a community of people that are interested in things that I’m interested in. (They) come with knowledge and history and questions, and we can sit together and either talk about that stuff or really silly stuff or cry together,” she said.

Clark looks at it as teaching confidence more than skills and finds joy in seeing people embrace sewing and really make it their own.

“I think it takes a lot of courage to show up somewhere and not know how to do something and just decide to jump in and maybe not be the best at it but be a part of a community of people trying to,” she said. “… I don’t want people to make what I make. I want them to take the tools that I was given and make their own world.”

Clark’s free mending workshop will be at 5:30 p.m., Thursday, Sept. 25, at the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art in Overland Park. Advance sign-ups are required; visit nermanmuseum.org for more details. The workshop is connected to Amy Kligman’s “The Salon for Possible Futures” now on display at the museum.