Embroidery
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Profile Pictures, 2010-2011
Embroidery on aida cloth, two 5" diameter circles and one 6" diameter circle
Euphemism, 2011
Embroidery on aida cloth, 4" tall by 9" wide oval
Progression, 2011
Embroidery on aida cloth with small rhinestones, 4" tall by 9" wide oval
Sampler, 2011
Embroidery on linen, 16 1/2" x 21"
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Ribbon Piece (Why hasn't he called me / Stop calling me), 2010
Embroidery on grosgrain ribbon, two 4" spools. Height varies.
Statement
As a shy child, I spent long hours in self-imposed exile, creating needlework projects. Needlework afforded me time to reflect on my own problems while also taking a break from the hard work of solving them. As an adult, I continue to seek out repetitive tasks, using the time where my hands are busy, but my mind is alert to ruminate – often analyzing my experiences within relationships.
Women artists in the 1970's began resurrecting traditional "women's work" as a means to address the difficulties of being taken seriously in a male-dominated art world. By appropriating the skills that Victorian women were required to master in order to prove their gentility and readiness for marriage, contemporary women hoped to comment on the art world's patriarchical values. The tools, they reasoned, needed to be reexamined. Why did art need to use steel to be valid, for example?
While researching the type of embroidery I created as a child, I found that embroidery was part of the education of mainly white women of means. I imagined cynically that women were kept busy doing embroidery at home so that they might not notice that they were prohibited from participating in public affairs, which were controlled by men. I also began to view embroidery as a way that women themselves perpetuated gender-based exclusion.
Utilizing a medium with such a weighted past, my work shows moments of my own power within modern relationships. I mock men's clumsy sexual advances, and redraw the idealistic, married future pictured in many Victorian samplers.