Meet Andrea Brinkley | Textile & Embroidery Artist

We had the good fortune of connecting with Andrea Brinkley and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Andrea, where are your from? We’d love to hear about how your background has played a role in who you are today?
Looking back, it’s no surprise I became a textile artist who specializes in depicting flowers in wools. As a young child, growing up on my family’s farm in the wool and mohair region of South Africa, I loved to watch my father and brother shearing our merino sheep and angora goats. I would play on bales of wool and mohair and can still recall the distinctive smell of lanolin in the shed! My family also propagated plants for their retail nursery, so I was immersed in picturesque gardens from an early age. I developed an eye for colors while playing with flowers, spreading blooms all over the lawn, pretending they were ladies in luxurious, frilly ballgowns.

I remember at age four, sitting in the sun on the front porch of our farmhouse, my mother—an avid knitter—placed knitting needles in my hands and taught me to knit. My parents had a dear friend who lost her husband and children in a car crash and regularly came to stay on our farm. In spite of her grief, or perhaps because it was healing for her, “Aunt” Steph patiently spent hours helping me to improve my knitting skills and teaching me how to embroider. I am grateful to her and my mother for giving me a gift that continues on.

My mom sewed all my dresses, and I would play with fabric pieces and haberdashery at her feet for hours on end. I hand sewed Barbie “tube” dresses out of every scrap I could muster, so my parents bought me a hand powered, antique Singer sewing machine (with a turn handle) for my 11th birthday. In my teen years I learned to crochet from a magazine that came with instructions and a colorful crochet hook set. Because I am self-taught, I have don’t hold the yarn correctly. It has hasn’t held me back!

After high school, I attended culinary school in Cape Town. In my down time my hands were never still. I crocheted, knitted or sewed my clothes and many of my gifts. All the needle arts are an extension who I am and how I express myself. They instill a sense of patience within me that forces me to slow down and be still. It’s so grounding to know that these arts have sustained men and women through the ages.

As creating with my hands is the elixir for my soul, so flowers are my happy indulgence. Growing up, I entertained myself on the farm with abundant flowers like hibiscus, freesias and bougainvillea. Today I love to potter in the small garden around our house, dig in the dirt and end my outdoor session with a vibrant bunch of “findings” to arrange in a vase.

I eventually moved permanently to the U.S. With the birth of my children, I became engrossed in the art of smocking. This is a technique of embroidering on pleated fabric. It became my new passion in the needle arts and led me to making countless custom, hand-smocked children’s garments. I even bought our local smocking shop and joined an embroidery guild. I traveled to take technique classes from incredible teachers at seminars held all over the USA. Each time I was able to return to my shop to teach new skills to my customers. These skills have stayed with me and are to me the mark-making on my fiber art just as brushstrokes are to a painter on her canvas.

As much as I loved smocking, I always came back to working with yarn! In fact, it was my stash of gorgeous wools—many skeins of which I brought back from visits to the area close to my childhood farm home—that crystallized my vision for my creative business, O&Y Studio.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
In 2016, I wanted to start a creative business with an Etsy shop for selling my fiber art, but I couldn’t figure out what I wanted to make to sell! I spent months with this conundrum, trying everything from water coloring houses, to sewing detailed stuffed cats, to designing and stitching tedious fine botanical embroidery. Nothing seemed to gel. I knew I wanted to make something that was uniquely mine; something that I could put my stamp of approval on and feel proud to sell. Eventually I returned to the first fiber of my childhood—wool—and started stitching with my colorful skeins. Combined with an unexpected find of several antique wooden embroidery hoops, everything fell into place!

I developed my method of crocheting a flat circle which I mount inside a wooden embroidery hoop. This becomes the background for my unique approach to crewel embroidery. After my years of smocking and embroidering tiny, precise stitches on fine linens, wool stitching on nubby crochet is a completely different beast. I discovered that I absolutely loved doing it! Making up my designs gave me freedom to express myself. I enjoyed seeing the textural effects that hand spun and dyed yarns create. I am particular when it comes to my materials. Something I learned with fine needlework is never to waste time with inferior products. I opt for natural fibers, beautiful hand spun wools and mohair, indy dyed and painted yarns, and fine gauge jewelry wire. Yes, I said wire! I crochet jewelry wire as backgrounds and embroider on them too.

I use no patterns, freehanding my designs as I go. (My designs are always 100% my own.) Using my mastery of stitch techniques, I begin with a focal flower then add leaves, smaller blossoms and vines. I stitch berries, buds and centers, often adding beads or metallic threads. While my hoops look great alone and in a variety of settings, I particularly enjoy designing with an eye for displaying them on a gallery wall in an eclectic display of plates, framed art, photos and other hoops within the same palette series.

As soon as I settled on a trajectory with my unique wool embroidery on crochet, I started my business and called it O&Y Studio. My name is Andrea Brinkley but I am better known as Andy (hence the business name of O Andy or O&Y) I create in my light-filled, home studio. Etsy is the main place I sell my work. I participate in local markets and pop-ups whenever I can, and this year I have entered several art shows. I love to challenge myself and have recently embroidered a woven chair!

My head is constantly swimming with ideas! I have to rein myself in and not dabble in too many areas at one time. I am currently embroidering a series called “Stitching My Garden” where I am depicting the varieties of flowers that I grow on vintage badminton, tennis or squash rackets. I do have plans to explore embroidering on other unusual, untraditional surfaces with hopes to one day make a mural. For this, I am researching and seeking out textiles and substrates for the background, including knitted wire.

Looking back, my fiber art had humble beginnings on the family sheep farm of my childhood. It grew and grew over the years until I had my proudest “art moment” earlier this year when I was chosen as a “Class of 2023 ArtPop Street Gallery” artist in Charlotte, NC. This has meant that an image of my work has been shown all over our city this year, as well as all over the USA on billboards and digital displays and kiosks, to include an exhilarating month-long showing on a 90 foot tall billboard in New York’s Times Square! I realize that textile art has always been central to my existence. It is surely embedded in my very DNA.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
On Day One, we would start seeing Charlotte by heading Uptown for a walk around the city streets to see the public art that is all over that area. We would end up at Fahrenheit, which is a rooftop bar and restaurant with an incredible view of Uptown. We would watch the sunset over cocktails and then dine while the daylight wanes and the beautiful and diverse buildings become illuminated.

Day Two we would return to Uptown to view the latest exhibit at the Mint Museum. The Bechtler and Harvey Gantt museums are also a must, followed by a walk in Romare Bearden Park. From there we can view the Panthers stadium. After all that time on our feet, we will refresh and rest our poor toes with cocktails at Sea Level. A divine dinner would follow at La Belle Helenes restaurant because the food is excellent but also because it’s such a beautiful place!

Day Three to Five I would definitely take an excursion out of town. Asheville is 2.5 hours away, and is just amazing as one ascends the foothills through passes and seeing the changing landscape. We would probably spend at least two nights there. The Biltmore House would be a must see, as would the Grove Park Inn. I love to roam the Botanical Gardens at Asheville and head off on a side path into the woods. We would include a jaunt on the Blue Ridge Parkway, probably with a picnic stop. We wouldn’t leave without breakfast at The Sunny Point Cafe. For the road, we’ll stop at Hole for coffee and delicious doughnuts. From Asheville, we will take I-40 to Winston-Salem where we will include a few hours at Old Salem Museums & Gardens for a self-guided tour. It’s an old Moravian mission and school with preserved historic homes and buildings, many of which can be walked through. The staff wear period costumes. Before we leave Old Salem, we will go to Winkler’s Bakery to buy Moravian cookies so I can send some home with my bestie! They are wafer thin, crisp cookies and come in the original gingerbread flavor as well as lemon, sugar cookie and chocolate. All flavors are amazing. We will refuel with lunch at the Katharine Brasserie before the 90 minute drive back to Charlotte. That night, tired from travel, we will order pizza in from Ilios Noches, a restaurant in South Charlotte that we love. We can share photos from each other’s lives and airplay them on our TV while we eat!

Day Six will mostly be at home. I’ll give my bestie a tour of my studio and show her my process. If I have some orders, I can definitely show her all that’s entailed to package and mail each order. After a stop at the post office, we will explore some of the fabulous old neighborhoods with gorgeous homes that the Queen City has to offer. We will stop at a delectable restaurant in South Park called 131 Main for their delicious luncheon salads. We will return home and in the afternoon we can walk to either my favorite coffee spot, Brakeman’s in Matthews, or to Artisen, an Ecuadorian gelato shop where all they produce is both gluten and dairy free and….it’s all utterly divine. Maybe we will stop at both and then walk off the calories taking a long round about way on one of the area’s amazing greenways to get home. I’ll need a little prep time because that night I think we will all be ready for a home cooked meal and we’’ll have our in-town family join us to see our friend.

Day Seven we’ll load her luggage into the car and head to Stowe Botanical Gardens in the nearby town of Belmont for a serene walk around nature before heading to the airport for a sad farewell and promise to keep in touch and see each other again soon. I’m sure she’ll be ready for a nap on the plane!

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?

My mother deserves a ton of credit. She was my first teacher in the textile arts and my earliest encourager. When I was growing up, through each new phase in learning my craft, she ensured I had what I needed in the way of materials, equipment and knowledge to succeed. She asked a few friends and even some acquaintances to teach me new skills that she thought I would benefit from. My parents worked hard to keep our family financially afloat so now, through adult eyes, I realize how many of the purchases she made for me were very likely big sacrifices for her and my dad.

Contact information:

• Website: oandystudio.com
• Instagram: @oandystudio
• Linkedin: Andrea Brinkley
• Facebook: @oandystudio

Image Credits

Robb Webb Photographer Chris Henry Photography Susannah Henry Barry Jenkins