Intricate woven knots of fabric hanging from rods decorate the walls of Coffee Cat this month after the local coffee shop chose Chloé Covin as the featured artist for October.
Covin is an Auburn resident who twists and knots pieces of fiber in macramé wall hangings and stitches embroidery on fabric while meditating to simultaneously create her art and calm her mind.
Covin has long held an inclination for being creative and a desire to contribute to her community. As a child, Covin was diagnosed with a brain tumor, but when she was 10 years old, the Make A Wish Foundation gifted her with an art studio where a love for all forms of art was planted and cultivated.
“I was just living out there, painting. I had a pottery wheel and a kiln,” Covin said.
Her penchant for art grew with her and turned into her making products for her various businesses. Artist is just one of the many hats Covin wears. She is also the owner of LiveWell Juicing Co. and a skin care line, Care by Chloé
“I have a lot of things I want to share with people,” Covin said.
Having her current artwork recognized by Coffee Cat has been nice to see, Covin said.
Covin said she is heavily involved in her local community. The artist moved to Auburn in 2012 after leaving LaGrange College, where she was studying music, because of medical complications.
“I needed to step away from my life and Auburn was an easy side step,” she said.
Covin has strong roots in Auburn through close friends and a church family. Since her move, she has helped fellow local artists and done branding work.
Her community is excited that she is now being recognized as an artist because she has been working hard to grow her other businesses for the past two years, she said.
Covin discovered an affinity for fiber art when she was bedridden for six weeks after her stomach surgery.
“I had to figure out what to do for six weeks without sitting up,” Covin said.
Covin was inspired by the Huichol fiber artwork. She said each piece took the Huichols fifty hours to create because they would recite a special phrase over and over. Covin felt encouraged by the beauty she found in their fiber art and decided to find her own method of crafting while she was recovering from surgery.
A passion to create and contribute artistic works of her own came to Covin when she discovered the Huichol Indian yarn painters of Mexico, she said.
“I had a stick and I had some string and I was like, ‘let me try to put these things together,’” Covin said.
Despite the simplistic appearance of her pieces, each one was created in a tumultuousness state of mind. The best art is all about struggle, tension and pain, and while she is creating she is also meditating on these things, she said.
“I can look at a piece and know exactly what was going on in my head when I was making it and there is a lot of tension in the knots,” she said.
The artist said that working on her pieces is how she provides herself with a mental and emotional break in moments of stress and desperation.
“Each piece represents a prayer and a meditation and a very specific mental and emotional growth for me,” Covin said.
Covin has enjoyed being able to display her work in the Auburn community because it has opened space on her own walls to make new pieces. The artist said she craves new challenges and opportunities – the bigger the better.
“I don’t have plans for the future, I am kind of along for the ride,” Covin said. “I wake up everyday and do everything I can do.”
Everyone has an art; they just have to pursue it, she said.
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