looky looky!

territories 12
15" x 11"
embroidery on paper
2009

this is what i've spent the last three days working on. lovely! i've been so taken with how much the hanging strings on these pieces resemble a girl's hair so i tried to exploit that resemblance further by braiding it. i love it! and i think it really starts to push certain metaphors to the forefront of the work: body as landscape, traditional expectations or ideals of the female, the longing for a white picket fence childhood or life, etc.


detail

i think i may add a pink or black bow to the end of the braid to really bump up the little girl associations that this piece presents.

i'm still working on the jumbo version of this and it is going to take me a long long time to get it finished. the size that the last three of these have been is 15" x 11" and it's at least a good 10 hours of stitching. the jumbo one is 4 times the size so, mathematically, it'll be a 40 hour work week to get it finished and that's only if i work on nothing else. yeah right. i like bouncing back and forth between works in progress, applying what i've learned with one piece to another, testing ideas, and just exploring the possibilities certain materials offer.

paper is so versatile that while i'm working on one piece i get so many ideas for future works that i've got to stop for a minute and write the ideas down so i don't forget them. i've lost a great many wonderful idea by assuming my mind can hold on to every whimsical thought that passes through while i'm working. and these pieces in particular are so meditative that i lose track of time and get lost in thought quite easily. that's something i've always loved about sewing and cross-stitch and crochet... all the traditional women's work that i get caught up in. i'm just so attracted to using the lineage of these activities in an art context to talk about identity, loss, longing, day-dreaming, hope. there's an inherent poetry in these traditions that i'm trying to bring to the surface and highlight. i think i'm on the right track with these territories...

but i'm also thinking of changing their names. yes, there are definitely part of the entire territories series i've been working on for the past year, but they have been such a turning point for me that i really think they need a title of their own... they are definitely different than the earlier work and don't have anything to with notions of the decorative like the others do. there's something so quiet and humble in these last three embroidery pieces that i want to honor it. they need to have their own title. i've just got to think one up. :)