For those of you in the New York area, I am giving a gallery talk this Thursday night at Shop Art Gallery in Brooklyn. My work is on exhibit there in a 4-person show, "Visual Vernacular," through November 29th. The gallerist, Muriel Guepin, kindly invited me to talk about the process and inspiration behind my work.My brief talk will be followed by Q and A, so get your questions ready! I like a challenge.
Thursday, 11/19, 7-8pm at Shop Art.
51 Bergen Street, F/G train to Bergen Street station.
Refreshments will be served.
I really like the details that you did in this piece. The lamp, lettering and the silo give a lot of character and dimension. After reading you journal entry, I can smell the bread and goodies baking. I find it hard to make lettering clear when making dense embroidery. You did a great job on the bakeries sign.
ReplyDeleteOne thing you might not think a lot about living in NYC all the time, is how most of the United States is so deprived of architectural history that is found in cities in the North East. I think noticing and keeping those details in is a great way to add richness to your work.
In Atlanta, for instance, they tore down the historical buildings and put chunks of plaster from the building and a photo of the building up on the bank wall.
I thought the South has lost it's roots.
When we moved to Boston for a one year it dawned on me how old this country really is and how just walking down the street was a part of history and viewing history. It felt like being in a play and having the set ready for your to walk into ...only you were not properly dressed. But the ghost were.
I wish I could come to your show!
Thank you so much for your kind comments. I appreciate your ongoing commitment to reading and commenting on my blog. It means a lot, and helps inspire me to keep posting.
ReplyDeleteAs per the bakery sign, I think it took me a while to get the lettering right. I am pretty sure that I stitched it, took it apart, and stitched it again. It is a separate piece of fabric appliqued onto the main fabric. I also worked from a photograph for this piece, which I found on the internet by doing a Google search.
The old-fashioned looking lamp post in the piece is actually a relatively new addition to New York City streets -- perhaps the City's attempt to recognize architectural history by creating something new in an "antique" feel?
I also wanted to tell you that I spoke a bit about blogs in my talk last night, and mentioned in particular your comments, and how interesting is it to get to know someone from across the country through each other's blogs. Thanks so much for being a part of my blog, and for sharing your work through your blog.
I just love having been at your talk via a contact on the internet. Thank you for thinking of me. I know that being an artist committed to ones art can be a lonely solitary life. Writing about ones feelings and things that are "real" and yet universal also take a special commitment. I appreciate this in you.
ReplyDeleteYou have kinda inspired something in me. I saw your esty shop and saw the book that you were making. I really liked the idea of stitching on paper. My first attempts at embroidery were on paper plates which my mother poked holes in. I was 5 years old. So I decided to make a book of embroidery and simple designs that I drew with conte' crayons. It is simple straight stitch...but it is kinda fun to see how many ways you can make this stitch interesting. I was going to make it into a stitch dictionary with different stitches...but the paper I am using is not too flexible and so I haven't really found way to make that work.
It has kept my fingers warmed up for an embroidery piece that I am going to be adding to my 'Dug Out' quilt.
Here is a picture of my quilt that I did a lot of text on. It is not on my current blog...but an old blog of mine and an old flicker page. It is based on a Ziggy Marley song called "Fallen is Babylon"...It was to protest deceit of all kinds....and promote the idea of being free from bondage of all kinds.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.flickr.com/photos/10763501@N05/3429978544/
Your quilt is beautiful. Has it ever been exhibited? It's got amazing detail and stitching.
ReplyDeleteOne thing I do when stitching on paper is to strategically poke holes in the paper first, and then run the thread through. This really helps, especially since paper is not flexible the way fabric is.
Basically the quilt influenced by Van Gogh's Starry Night, it is a historical quilt based on the year 2003. It has a comet in it that went very close to the sun and pulled a corona that was in the shape of the eye of Ra....We went to war against Iraq for "weapons of Mass destruction" which was just a lie. And Mad Cow was discovered in Washington/Oregon and the covered up.
ReplyDeleteThese things have to do with the great Whore of Babylon, and the merchants that trade with her, and drink her wine. The wine cup was in there for two reasons...it fit the words...but I had a pen accident an there were huge PINK ink stains there. So when I had to put a wine cup there I thought I might as well go ahead and put the words all over it. I got the idea for embroidering words over it from a tombstone in a cemetery on Beacon Hill in Boston. There is a tombstone that has all kinds of word chiseled into it. Probably a husband whose wife died in child birth and left him with a bunch of kids to take care of. So he took out his aggression on the stone. It is a tribute to those hard times.
If you look at the barrettes that are on the same page you will see that they are all done about different classics that I read.
I like living life on the edge but sometimes it can be kinda lonely and tiresome.
The first part of my post didn't get published...so I will re write that.
ReplyDeleteThe quilt has not been shown. I haven't even tried to exhibit it. I felt at the time it was too controversial.
I was also influenced by Howard Finster's folk art.
I am glad you like it.
It is kinda heavy and I had blogged about it before on another blog I had...but I deleted it and started this new one, because I don't want to save the world from their own blindness.
I feel like the man that H.G Well's writes about in · "The Country of the Blind".
Thank you for the idea of punching the holes in first. I do have to punch the hole coming from the back in first...but because I want the work to be spontaneous I don't punch ALL the holes first...like my mother did the paper plates when I was 5 ...and that is when I started embroidery....I just punch it from the front side before I am going to come up in that hole, and then flip it over and come up. It is much more time consuming that I imagined when i started the project.
ReplyDeleteI might get bored with just the straight stitch and try for more elaborate stitches by punching the holes in first and trying it...after all if it doesn't work I can just throw that one in the garbage. Not like it is in the book yet.
Well I was looking around and found this paper embroidery piece.
ReplyDeletehttp://millionlittlestitches.blogspot.com/2009/11/allotment-garden-blogging-bee.html
It is totally over the top and has a multitude of different stitches.
Thanks for the link to millionlittlestitches. What amazing work! I am teaching embroidery at the moment, and I can't wait to share this link with my class!
ReplyDeleteHave you noticed when you poke holes in paper that on one side, there is a little ridge of torn paper? I sometimes like to have that ridge on the front side, to add texture. Other times, like in my subway sketchbook, I like the ridge on the back, so that the front drawing looks more pristine.
I am glad you liked the link. I hadn't paid attention to the way I was poking the hole and how it would change the look of the embroidery. I will have to play around with that.
ReplyDeleteYou can consider me HOGGING some GLORY here and I hope you don't mind. (We participate in the Kinetic Race here in Humboldt and they judge you on how much GLORY you hog.
I had a piece of my work published in Mr. Stitch. The article is on Hippie Embroidery.
http://www.mrxstitch.com/2009/11/27/hippie-embroidery/
I showed another one of my extreme embroidery pieces
http://quiltarchitect.blogspot.com/2009/11/beckys-gallery.html
And this is another quilt that I made with words, it is to preserve words written on a post card by me, which was sent to my mother...then returned years later.
http://quiltarchitect.blogspot.com/2009/11/flowers-memory-quilt.html
Congratulations on the Mr. X Stitch listing. He's discerning, so good for you to get a listing!
ReplyDeleteAnd the quilt is beautiful. A lovely idea to preserve the postcard. I am so sorry about the loss of your little girl.