Introduction to FibersBeading

Student Work

Tilleke Schwarz Beware of Embroidery (1997)

Schwarz’s art is often compared to graffiti. She clearly possesses a certain urban chutzpah, but because hers is so definitively an art of stitch and the slow process, I find the graffiti association a little misleading. A more moot association might be with white noise or radio

interference — as the momentary or incidental constantly intrudes upon the slow-time of stitching,

living, and remembering. All of her canvases somehow suggested aural interference to me. And her mixing of different stitch techniques and genres, as well as the intrusion of other bits of the material world into the

stuff of the canvas itself, conveys how the ephemera of everyday life disrupts and yet defines narrative comprehension of ourselves and our histories.

Tilleke Schwarz,

Count Your Blessings

Sandrine Pelletier Wild Boys“I wanted to show the violence behind

the gentleness of embroidery. I find this visual effect intriguing. I discovered by accident that it was interesting to show

the back as well as the front the embroideries. It is true that the back of

these portraits has a wilder appearance: the figures seem to bleed from their eyes,

their flesh seem to be full of scars and their veins seem to be inflating. … The

way I embroider is absolutely profane, … [and] working with a sewing machine allows me to obtain a rougher, wilder

trait. I never follow the outlines attentively. Sometimes the machine

jumps, or it gets stuck and these accidents can create very interesting effects. … it introduces a very physical dimension.”

Morwenna Catt Phrenology Head II 2007.The heads are embroidered with fragments of texts: the Mother one has "You will need eyes at the back of your head". The Father has "The gloom and the silence, i am terrified when I realise I am alone", etc. Words and images have been combined in traditional embroidered samplers for more than 500 years,

and many contemporary artists give their own twist to the convention.

Elaine Reichek, First Morse Message

Elaine Reichek embroidered an 80-foot long transparent curtain

with dots and dashes that spell out the first

telegraph message sent by Samuel F. B. Morse on

May 24, 1844: "What hath God wrought".

Afro Abe II, Sonya Clark

RepubliCraft No. 2: Bedazzled MoneyMoney is pretty. You earned it (or inherited it). GOP tax laws let you keep it.

But it's even prettier when embellished with colorful crystals and jewels. Play Department of Treasury and bling up Benjamin Franklin with a tiara or Elton

John-style sunglasses. Impress friends at the club when you buy the next round. Courtesy Jessica Vitkus.

Angelo Filomeno, Death of Blinded PhilosopherItalian artist Angelo Filomeno, who learned embroidery as a child and today is a master in the form, has created

a wide panel titled Death of Blinded Philosopher. It depicts a skeleton whose eye sockets have been violated by alaws, facing a blood red explosion of

tendrils and blossoms attacked by flies and cockroaches.

Andrea DezsöThe Transylvanian-born Dezsö has embroidered dozens of her mother's sayings and arrayed them along the close-set walls of a maze-like corridor. Each of these small pieces includes neatly stitched diagrams and begins with the statement "My mother claimed that…" followed by such homilies as … "my sister was a rubber accident." The latter image includes a blue condom surrounded by beaded spermatozoa with wriggling metallic-thread tails.Such homey and intimate details recall Philip Larkin's pithy lament: "They fuck you up, your mum and dad"R.C. Baker --The Village Voice

Sara Impey, detail of Quilt Blog (2007)

Her Quilt Blog is a truly beautiful thing – the sheer quality of stuff and technique really sings out of the stitches. But it is also a serious meditation on the conflict between the momentary and the slow process, particularly

as that regards ideas of making. One’s first instinct when looking at the quilt is to understand it speedily, almost instantaneously—to read it as a

straightforward message to the viewer from the maker. Following the words from left to right, you quickly trace a narrative questioning the process of

making (‘. . . find yourself asking why anybody bothers making things in this age of instant gratification. . . ’). But, in the act of unpicking that narrative you start to notice how the characters emerge out of the negative spaces

on the fabric canvas. It is almost as if the quilt is writing itself. Impey stitches only in the spaces between her thoughts. She makes us look at the

process of making under and behind the words we read. In so doing, we contemplate the gap between vision and labour—the gap that is the time of the quilt’s making, its slow process. So we are prompted to think in a rather different way about her art, her fabrication. Rather than seeing the quilt as a lovely thing conveying a message to us in a moment, we consider it more fully as an object made over time . . . the time of its stitches . . . a long time! The quilt is both doing, and meditating upon, what it is saying—acting itself

out, and thinking about itself with some considerable aplomb.

Fibers DepartmentEmbroidery Pieces

Student Work

Amy at shopSCAD, contacted me and asked me to create a "ladylike fan" for a guest of Paula Wallace. The idea came to me within a minute of her

contacting me. I am home in Wisconsin right now and the prairie on our property is FILLED with wildflowers. I looked out the window and

immediately knew that I wanted the fan to resemble a Queen Anne's Lace flower.

-Emily Cox

Emily CoxConfused and Constrained

Molly Lieberman

Introduction to FibersEmbroidery

Student Work

Introduction to FibersBeading

Student Work