Tattoos and embroidery

My brother got married in September, the same weekend as the Brooklyn-Museum sponsored Go Brooklyn open studio weekend. I was in silver heels with my nails done (a twice-a-year event) and an ill-fitting purple-grey dress, while my Brooklyn art friends were career-building. 

One of the wedding highlights for me was seeing one of my brother's friend's amazing tattoo-covered leg. From what I remember, one of her legs is largely adorned, and it looks like she's wearing these celebratory, asymmetrical tights. She and I talked about tattoos (I don't have any even though I admire them on other people all the time), and I've since been heavily dreaming about a tattoo that looks embroidered. 

A Google images search for tattoo fonts and tattoo hearts yielded some pretty fascinating results: I've started embroidering my name in tattoo lettering, and am thinking of embroidering an image of an anatomical heart (yes, people do have tattoos that are this literal!). Maybe a new series is on its way?

Image from http://waktattoos.com/id5973/heart-tattoo-600x799-pixel.html

The start of my name embroidered in a tattoo font with stylized roses.

Happiness

"Happiness." 2012. Embroidery on 

fabric dyed with purple onion skin.

Let Me Be Enough

One of my Dumbo Arts Festival confessions: "every day I pray as I walk out the door 'let me be enough.'"

This is interesting to me, because I sometimes think that I am too much of something...

My answer of love is you (in Korean AND English)

Self Control and Facebook are not really friends, if you know what I mean

One of my favorite confessions from this weekend, rendered in the original handwriting. A big thanks to the person who supplied this. I LOVE it!

Embroidered Confessions at the 2012 Dumbo Arts Festival

I had a blast at this year's Dumbo Arts Festival. Many thanks to Lisa Kim, who spearheads the event with Frank Riley, and to the members of her team, including Lina Petrova, Loam Disher and others, who literally helped set me up in a tent for the weekend, and who made it fun.

So what was I doing all weekend? Collecting confessions, secrets and wishes on post-it notes and Twitter posts, which I have begun embroidering. Here is a sampling of my first embroideries from DAF12. Many thanks to my visitors for your sharing your hopes and dreams with me.

I will continue to post embroideries from this experience for the next few weeks, so stay tuned.