Charlotte Niel - Visual Narratives

Artist:  Charlotte Niel
Title:   You Didn't Say Goodbye, 2024
Size:   Approx.12 x 15"
Print Type:  Archival pigment print with printed silk organza overlay and thread
Price: $875

ABOUT THE WORK

(This piece is one of four from Charlotte that is currently being exhibited in the PCNW gallery as part of our 27th juried exhibition, Visual Narratives. On view until December 14, 2025.)

“Forget Me Not” is a project  about memory and loss, revealed through family photographs and thread.

Before losing her eye sight and memory, my mother loved to embroider. She was especially gifted at crewel embroidery of flowers. Flowers represent beauty; they elicit and symbolize different emotions and are used as gifts to convey feelings of love, happiness, joy, loss and sorrow. Used to honor and remember the dead, they are not forever and fade no matter how much nurturing we provide.

As a tribute to my mother, I create images on silk organza using photographs I made of her embroidered pieces.  I selectively stitch on the silk overlays in low light, and unlike my mother, I allow the thread to knot, twist or come undone, reinforcing my mother’s decline mentally and physically and her fading relationship to the underlying photograph.  I then float the newly embroidered pieces over photographs of those she loved but no longer remembered.  

Stitching helps bind me to my mother and her past as I incorporate my own needlework onto the images of her embroidery, the flowers represent different emotions or states of being linked to the photographs, the silk overlays reinforce the effect of a “veiled” recollection and obscured vision; loose, tangled threads and unfinished fabric remind me of the unraveling of memory, the chaos of dementia and how life and death are intertwined and complicated. 

The process is cathartic and helps me to accept the looming legacy of forgotten moments, my own possible dementia and mortality.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Charlotte Niel is a self-taught photographer and multi-media artist whose work focuses on themes of identity, memory and loss. She has explored what it means to grow old in America and the importance of purpose, relationships and memories to remain vital.
With a degree in History, she is interested in the role of art and images in representation and interpretation of the past, their relationship to the present and how memory informs both. As an avid outdoor enthusiast, she is conc erned about the impact of climate change on how and where we live.

Charlotte began her photography journey with black and white film and later embraced digital photography. She is now mixing mediums and is pushing new boundaries by incorporating fabric, embroidery, encaustic and collage into her practice.

Charlotte’s work has been exhibited nationally. Select locations include Cooper Union Gallery, New York, New York; Sussex Community College Gallery, Newton, New Jersey; Cordon||Potts Gallery, Rayko Photo Center, San Francisco, California; Griffin Museum of Photography, Winchester, Massachusetts; Panopticon Gallery, Boston, Massachusetts; and the Center for Photographic 8Arts, Carmel, California. Her images are also held in private collections and have been published internationally. Awards include selection as a Critical Mass Finalist in 2016, 2019 and 2023 as well as juried acceptance into the de Young Museum Open, 2023 and Review Santa Fe 2024.