Artist of the Week: Chloe Sowden

Photo by Trevor Paulus

Get to know junior Chloe Sowden, a digital collage artist who started her own business on Instagram, “@chlocreated,” in December.

What style of art do you do?

I do mostly digital collages, so I take a lot of other people’s’ work, like photography, artwork and drawings, and I sort of cut them and paste them into my own digital collage; and I have their [the artist’s] permission.

When did you get started in art?

I’ve always loved to do art throughout my whole life but like the collages I’m doing on my Instagram I probably started like a year ago. But I didn’t start posting until December.

Do you use art that people here at East have made?

It’s mostly stuff I’ve found on Pinterest, or online. It’s like [art] they post [if] they don’t care if other people use it.

Are you in an art class at East?

I’m in Art Portfolio, which Mr. Finkelston teaches. There’s AP, IB and just regular Art Portfolio. This year I’m just in regular but next year I’m planning to take AP. That class [Art Portfolio] is a lot of on your own projects, like he gives you basic guidelines but then you can do whatever you want with them.

What has been one of your favorite pieces that you’ve made so far?

I think one of my favorite things I’ve done so far are the Travis Scott Astroworld themed collages. I did about 70 of them for free. So I started charging for collages probably about a month after I made my account, but I purposely did these for free to get publicity again because my account was kind of slowing down, not as many people were visiting it. And it definitely worked, and I still earned some money from it, because people paid to cut in line because the line was like 70 people long. But I’ve gotten a lot faster at them, they only take me like ten to 15 minutes now, and they used to take me a lot longer. Sometimes they’re even shorter, it depends on like what picture I’m cutting out.

How did you get started in your Instagram business Chlocreated?

I started that I think in December, like right before winter break. The reason I started it was because I was inspired by a different Instagram account, a random girl I don’t know, but she’s a college student and she had an account for all of her artwork, and she did some collages, some paintings, some drawing. And that was my original plan, but now it’s kind of turned into mostly digital collages.

Why did you want to start Chlocreated?

I just thought it would be cool to be able to share my work with others and have a portfolio online. Traditionally artists have portfolios but they’re not online, they’re not posted anywhere for anyone to see, and I think it’s cool to have it online because I can get feedback from people.

Where do you find your inspiration for your art?

I find a lot of it from other people’s portfolio Instagrams, and then a lot of it from Pinterest and also just other artists in my Art Portfolio class.

Click to view Sowden’s work and commentary on some of her collages below:

Multimedia by River Hennick