C.R. McCarthy is an artist, poet, and general oddball based in Chicago. Her work utilizes secondhand textiles to explore language, craft, and sustainability. A storyteller at heart—her pieces weave together color, texture, and composition to convey a mood and a message.

Encouraged to be creative from an early age, C.R. grew up playing with fabric scraps, clay, cardboard, and paint, crafting tiny worlds to inhabit. In art school, she dabbled in many mediums, from sewing and photography to cartooning and woodblock printing. She could often be found scribbling poems and writing paragraphs of prose in well-worn notebooks.

Though the demands of adulthood stymied her creative output for a time, the pandemic reawakened C.R.’s ardent desire to create. She began exploring work that incorporated her varied interests, creating pieces that combined textiles, photos, words, and the occasional found object.

These days, C.R. thoroughly embraces the softness inherent to fiber art and the typically undervalued techniques associated with women’s crafts. Using secondhand materials whenever possible, her work subtly explores what our society considers disposable. The poem fragments and poignant phrases in her pieces sometimes evoke nostalgia, strength, or humor. Regardless, they always make us pause and think.