When old and new love stories collide

Dear blog readers, dear cyberspace, dear digital friends,

Through the kindness of two Brooklyn curators, Katherine Gressel and Kim Maier of the Old Stone House, my work will be included in a show opening this Wednesday evening, "Partners, Parents, Pets: Contemporary Portraiture."

The curators were most interested in my 2011 Brooklyn Arts Council sponsored Brooklyn Love Exchange project. Most of that work was sold, and we're showing a few remaining pieces. I decided to revisit old content—love stories people had emailed me, and I'd liked but was too overwhelmed to embroider. I ended up making two of those and an email collaging memories of an old love with a new, brief love interest. The piece below includes 30 years of memories.

Remembering the past can be wistful and also torturous. I am glad this piece is over. I finished it in time for the exhibit and can move on emotionally from some difficult memories.

If you happen to be in the New York area, please join us this Wednesday, 2/10, 6-9pm at the Old Stone House in Park Slope, Brooklyn at 336 3rd Street.

In Residence, Monday, 10/26 – Sunday, 11/8

Join me at Workshop Gallery Artists Foundation at Brooklyn Workshop Gallery for the 2015 finale to Native/Immigrant City, my exploration of New York natives, immigrants and transplants from other parts of the country through soft sculpture. Since December 2014, I've been collecting stories and memories of moving to and from NYC, surviving rent hikes, questionable roommates and landlords, and falling in love with the City despite all the stress and vowing never to leave.

I translate friends' and strangers' stories into stop motion animations and embroideries on fabric paintings and sculptures. I try to give voice and tactile form to varying cultural points of view. With a Brooklyn Arts Council grant, I've had the opportunity to host some communal storytelling and embroidery events in the past year. Thanks to 61 Local and Brooklyn Workshop Gallery for donating space.

From 10/26–11/8, you can find me at Brooklyn Workshop Gallery. Special hours are:
Monday, 10/26, 12–7pm
Saturday, 10/31, 12–5pm
Sunday, 11/1, 2–5pm
Monday, 11/2, 12–6pm
Tuesday, 11/3, 11am–4pm

Join us on Thursday, 11/5 from 7-9pm for a poetry reading featuring KC Trommer and friends.

For additional hours and dates, contact me to set up a private viewing of the work, or look for updates via Facebook.

Are blogs obsolete?

Has Instagram surpassed blogging? I've come to prefer its ease of use and immediacy. Twitter, too, enables quick sharing of ideas, mostly stream of consciousness commentary, which feeds my embroideries and artist statements, hyperbolic though my comments may be. How to transfer followers from one platform to another?

To check in with me more regularly and give me access to your visual diaries, let's follow each other on Instagram.

For now, here are some more images of figures I'm profiling in Native/Immigrant City, an ongoing conversation with Brooklynites and New Yorkers (natives, transplants, immigrants) about surviving/thriving amidst breakneck speed gentrification and crushing daily demands. Currently receiving support through a Greater NY Arts Development Fund grant from the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs administered by BAC (Brooklyn Arts Council).

Brooklyn in Stop Motion

One of my favorite parts of being an artist are impromptu collaborations. Friends and strangers become part of my work by sharing their stories, which I record and transform into 2- and 3-dimensional embroideries. I sometimes even make stop motion animations using the audio recordings (which I edit).

Stop motion is new to me; I read an online tutorial to get the basic concept. And I now make these pieces which to me have a handmade feel. They're not clean and overly produced and edited; they're more about finding another way to share narrative in the digital age.

The piece below, An Old New York You Don't Really See, is narrated by my friend, Sherri Kronfeld, a native New Yorker and current Brooklynite. She is particularly gifted at capturing 1908s NYC through the eyes and impressions of a child. I wish my own memories retained the feelings of being a kid.

An old New York that you don't really see...

I am thrilled to have made major progress on these coordinated pieces. The embroidered painting and doll share the memories and stories of a native New Yorker (Queens born) who now lives in Brooklyn and has seen the borough go through many changes.

As I continue developing Native/Immigrant City, my embroidered study of assimilation versus acculturation in richly textured, socioeconomically challenging Brooklyn, I am excited to find stories like these from natives. I also want to thank the Greater NY Arts Development Fund of the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs administered by BAC for partial sponsorship of this project.

Coming up in May, I will be sharing the techniques I use to make the above pieces at Brooklyn Workshop Gallery at 393 Hoyt Street in Brooklyn near 3rd Street (and not too far from Whole Foods). Martine Bisagni, Director of the Gallery, is kindly hosting a Sewing and Embroidery Studio on Thursday May 21 and 28 and June 4th from 1-9pm. I will be on site from 6-9pm on those dates, sharing my techniques and processes and teaching embroidery basics.

Where has March gone?

While warmer weather continues to evade us, I've taken advantage of the climate to work indoors on growing Native/Immigrant City, my homage to New Yorkers born in the City and from other States and countries.

My current piece in process is below. Please get in touch if you happen to be a current or former Brooklyn resident with a story to share about your experience making a home in the borough.

I also want to thank the Brooklyn Arts Council for providing me with some funding to grow and continue this project. More specifically, I have a generous regrant from the Greater New York Arts Development Fund of the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, administered by Brooklyn Arts Council (BAC).

Finally, stay tuned for announcements of by-donation workshops coming soon to a Brooklyn venue near you...I provide supplies and instruction; you show up with an idea for a soft sculpture. Together, we turn your vision into a physical reality.

Selfie and @YrImaginaryDog, hanging out at IMC Lab and Gallery in NYC

The opening for Reach Out and Touch Me was fun. It was one of the coldest nights of the year. Nevertheless, many friends showed up, surprising me.

Above is my soft sculpture "family," Selfie, @YrImaginaryDog and her iPhone watching a stop motion video of me embroidering Selfie's and @YrImaginaryDog's tweets on Selfie. 

The exhibit is up through March 18th at IMC Lab, 56 W 22nd Street near 6th Ave in NYC. Get in touch if you'd like to visit!

In the meantime, stay tuned for news of my BAC-sponsored Native/Immigrant City project. As for me, I'm off to art fairs today. I can't wait for Spring Break!

Night Static, Frost

2013 reignited my interest in poetry, thanks in part to a grant from the Brooklyn Arts Council for my @EmbroideryPoems project. 

Yeah, I was one of those literary kids - poetry editor of my high school literary magazine, Patterns (thanks Sharon Lustbader), with a librarian-poet father and a linguistically-gifted mother. My brother also wrote poetry - he had a "blog" of sorts long before anyone had a blog.

Anyway, I'm back to writing WITHOUT embroidering first/while writing. It feels weird but somehow like a high school reunion with myself. Know what I mean?

Here is something I'm working on - something new. I feel totally uncertain about this direction - writing for writing's sake. But when I sat down at my computer the other day, this poured out, surprising me.

Maybe the best thing to come out of all of this is that I'm spending lots of time with InDesign - not a bad tool to learn...and as I'm a freelance artist, I'm up for hire...writing, design, art commissions, etc. Inquire within.

"Night Static; Frost"

Do you remember

the night we stood

on 7th Avenue

on mounds

of hope like snow?

The soft crunch evidence
that purity
could still exist
in NYC.
Do you remember
our talk on 7th Ave?
Static crackled
as you pointed to the hospital
where your nephew was born.
You admitted
how scared you'd been.
I shared
a story of loss that had left me
crying in the street,
on the train,
in a doctor's office,
everywhere, really.
"Sorry
to end your
Saturday night like this,"
you said. We stood
for 10 minutes or more.
You never stopped talking
Sidewalks seemed to invoke
your tongue, the thief
who stole
another morsel
of my time and attention,
pulling
grey hairs from my head,
the ones you claimed
never to see amidst the red.

That night on 7th Ave
our snow
started to melt
under my tiny feet—
my one foot
pointed towards you
as you reassembled your bike,
unlocking and then snapping
the detached front wheel
to the slim body;
My other foot
pointed towards the subway.
I was looking
for a way
into you or a way home;
for the night's 
static to leap from your cowlick
into my mouth
encasing me 
in unrelenting light.
I would have
stood there all night
but you rode off,
slightly drunk,
without a helmet,
still talking,
as I took my snow
home with me on the F train.

Poets near, far and beloved come together at Weaving Hand

This past Thursday, 12/19, marked the culminating celebration for my @EmbroideryPoems project, and my residency at Weaving Hand studio in Brooklyn. Many thanks to Dad, Tavi Gonzalez and Montana Ray for performing; Cynthia Alberto for hosting me as a resident artist, and the Brooklyn Arts Council for financial and spiritual support. This was fun - let's do it again soon!

Tavi Gonzalez @WeavingHand

Monte Olenick aka #dadknowsbest

Woven Poetry Bridge @WeavingHand

I only like him when...

I'm ovulating.

Crustacean support group

"Maybe I have to have a soft shell, be a soft shell crab so that I don't get smashed. But then I'll just end up in someone's sandwich." Crustacean Support Group.

Text by a friend for @EmbroideryPoems, BAC-sponsored project. 2013. 

Embroidery and watercolor on silk. 3"x3.75".

Paint Stains...

Sometimes, a piece just isn't finished. I updated this over the course of 18 hours, starting last night and ending just a few moments ago...

Poetry reading June 6 - join me!

Thursday, June 6, 6-9pm 
@61 Local, 61 Bergen Street near Smith Street
F/G to Bergen Street

As poets read and musicians play, embroiderers will stitch snippets of lyrics and verse to create new, "found" poems.

Join us!

Tiger Tooth from Angela Meyer aka @candylecoque

Thanks to @candylecoque (Angela Meyer) for tweeting
this to me. Embroidery and appliqué on fabric. 2013.

Mosquito from @lisakimlisakim

Thanks to Lisa Kim, friend, curator, and Director of Cultural Affairs, Two Trees Management (Dumbo, Brooklyn) for sending me this haiku.

Creative Voice, text by Sandy Denarski

Thanks to Sandy Denarski for writing the text for this piece. Of course, you're probably thinking that the piece could refer to me...

Creamsicle by @EmbroideryPoems

"Orange Brooklyn - Running under a creamsicle-colored sky."
2013. Embroidery and watercolor on fabric.
Text by @EmbroideryPoems. 

Echoes, poem by @Rachellah

"Echoes." Embroidery on fabric. 2013. Poem by @Rachellah,
aka Rachel Udell. Embroidery by Iviva Olenick

Dad knows best, part 1

Thanks, Dad for this tweet-length poem.