Christina Jensen Vicente took the scenic route to becoming an artist.
After more than two decades working in the luxury industry, the Florida-based fiber artist now brings her design experience to life through handmade fiber wall hangings, sculptural works and material experimentation.
Artist: The Georgia native was born to Danish parents and raised in Atlanta. She earned a BA from Washington University in St. Louis and an MA in interior design from Pratt Institute in New York City.
She has worked around the world as a creative director in the luxury fashion and lifestyle industry, culminating in a 20-year career with CHANEL.
Company/studio: Christina Jensen Vicente Studio has been based in Sarasota, FL, since 2018. The fiber artist works out of her home studio.
In the beginning: Jensen Vicente’s design career has spanned a range of disciplines over nearly 30 years, with roles in store design, visual merchandising, web design, art direction and retail innovation. Throughout this time, she took courses that allowed her to work with her hands, including weaving, woodworking, and glass blowing.
In 2018, she moved to Florida from NYC with her family and worked remotely. What began as a home office soon extended into a home studio where Jensen Vicente tended to her corporate job during business hours and created art on nights and weekends.
After moonlighting this way for several years, she left corporate life in 2024 to dedicate herself full time to her artistic practice.
Art & materials: Fiber, textile and mixed media ($1,000 to $12,000).
What’s popular: Several collections that represent her varied and ever-evolving practice.
- Encoded: A series of hand-stitched, felted wool works that translate poetry, passages, and other texts into code, then into color, and finally into form.
- Crystals: A series of sculptural wall art featuring organic crystal formations, grown directly onto fabric in the studio using natural processes and time. Each piece explores the creative capacity of nature itself with human intervention only to compose and style with complementary materials.
- Constellation: Felted wool designs that draw on the patterns, cycles, and sequences of the universe.
- Metallics: Textile works that hold the tension between fabric and metal, soft and rigid, fluid and immovable, water and earth.
- Naturals: Multi-media works that evoke the patterns and palettes of the natural world.
Process: Quite experimental, drawing on traditional techniques like weaving, knitting, and sewing and applying them in new ways. A portion of her practice is dedicated to exploring bio-materials which she creates in the studio and then applies to her work.
Inspirations: Agnes Martin, Andy Goldsworthy, Cy Twombly, Tara Donovan and Olga de Amaral.
Recent honor: Featured in issue 45 of Create! Magazine.
Recent show: “Encoded,” a solo exhibition at Art Center Sarasota.
What’s next: Working on a series of new collaborative pieces with her mother, a glass artist, for a group show this summer at Onna House in East Hampton, NY.
Where to buy:
- cjvstudio.com
- Onna House, East Hampton and Palm Beach.
- MARA Art Studio + Gallery, Sarasota.
Connect: Instagram: @christina.jensen.vicente
