The Paper Bride at McNally Jackson Books and Window display at Muriel Guepin Gallery

Esther Smith of Purgatory Pie Press, a collaborative book-making venture with her husband, Dikko Faust, invited me to be a guest artist at a promotional event for her new book, The Paper Bride, which shares step-by-step instructions for using paper left over from our daily lives to create invitations, decorations, and gifts for a wedding. Esther and Dikko teach at numerous New York City arts and crafts venues and universities. Their spirit of creating through collaboration is present in everything they do. 

Last Sunday, on Valentine's day evening at McNally Jackson Books, a lovely bookstore in Nolita, Esther led audience participants in a group project to make a paper garland out of recycled bridal magazine clippings. Later on, I shared my narrative embroidery. I had brought with me fabric, thread, needles, scissors, as well as a framed example of my work. I invited audience members to share with me stories of love and broken hearts. I asked participants to share with me the one sentiment they had wanted to tell a loved one but hadn't. Several young women approached me. As we talked, I shaped their stories into a sentence or two to embroider onto fabric. Working quickly, I made sure to hand each woman her finished piece before the end of the event. 

Thank you, Esther, for inviting me to participate in your event. And thanks to audience members for making it successful by trusting me with your stories.

To purchase The Paper Bride, click here.

Also on Valentine's Day, Muriel Guepin of Muriel Guepin Gallery kindly installed about a dozen of my post-it note pieces in the gallery window. The picture above shows part of the installation. Thanks, Muriel, for creating this display.

Social fabric; starting anew

Coming up next:

I quit him cold turkey.

Embroidered love notes for VDay at Muriel Guepin Gallery

It's that time of year again: mid-February otherwise known as February 14th or Valentine's Day. 

I believe in honoring the people you love every day. What better way to do so than with an embroidered love note?

I am very pleased to have 13 new post-its, or embroidered notes about contemporary love and dating available at 

Muriel Guepin Gallery

47 Bergen Street, between Smith and Court Streets, Brooklyn. F/G to Bergen Street. 

Open Wednesday-Saturday, 11am-7pm and Sunday 12 noon-5pm.

My pieces are available now through the 14th, and potentially thereafter.

For more info about Muriel Guepin Gallery, click here.

An empty house

"Our love was an empty 

house I tried to furnish.

I got

two of every-   but you

            thing,

never moved in."

Or, 

Our love was an empty house I tried to furnish. I got two of everything, but you never moved in.

No beginning and no end

The Quickest Path

"I'll take the quickest path to loving you."

I seem to be on a very slow path to finding someone to love. I used to feel more of a sense of urgency about this in my late 20s. 

Now, I'm all tied up in dreaming of how to make my living as an embroiderer/embroidery workshops teacher. Every day, I do feel closer to this, and as if I am on the right path.

One current business idea: "Hope for the love-torn" - 

Custom embroideries of your perfect boyfriend/girlfriend/spouse/etc.

You supply a written description, I will create a preliminary sketch for us to review, which I will then translate into an embroidery.

Towards Bliss

Can desire for another person light us up from inside and give us a sense of purpose?

Does the desire need to be mutual to be so potent?

I realized on one of several train rides this weekend that many of my relationships have been a monologue. I think I held on to my sense of what could develop, rather than what was necessarily present. And in one relationship in particular, I felt an underlying anxiety that my boyfriend would disappear. Ultimately, he did leave in a way that felt like complete abandonment.

At this specific moment, I have no desire to date. I am bored by the dynamics of dating, and I am tired of being on uncertain ground. I am tired of waiting for something to develop.

I have always hoped I could become very good friends with a man and have the relationship transition to being romantic within a period of a few months of getting to know each other.

Readers, I will share this with you when it happens, I promise. 

He Left Me Standing

In my late twenties, a year out of a relationship, I met someone who absolutely captivated me. He was a writer, and was lustful, imaginative, and emotionally unstable. 

Our dating relationship was brief. He both pulled me in and pushed me away. He said one thing and did another. It was a classically bad situation, a waste of my energy, and a waste of an otherwise brilliant guy.

"I wanted him to spend the night. He grabbed my shoulders and said, "In you is everything you need to be happy," and left me standing alone in the doorway.