School, pointedly.

Hello!  Well, it's really snowy here, and I promised my intro class I'd update the ol' blog to help them with their embroidered self-portrait projects. Here are some from a few semesters ago, made by Sarah Condon, Jess Rosenberg, Kelsey Eglehoff, Jenna Gleason, & Jacob Yahnke. 

So, I'm going to write a little bit about what happened when I PowerPoint-ed for them on Monday and how I'm probably going to go through a big stitching phase now that I've committed to knitting Christmas presents.  I blame the students, of course. If they just weren't so darned thirsty for sharp and pointed knowledge, I could allow myself to forget how much I like my subject matter, even when I'm not teaching it.  (And this is where John would pretend to sneeze while actually saying the word, "Nerd!")

Okay - our Powerpoint presentation featured the work of those anonymous laborers who brought us knowledge of the Battle of Hastings.  For being the world's most famous textile, the Bayeux Tapestry is pretty unknown - but not for it, we'd have no historical record of William the Conqueror and how the Saxons lost back in 1066 to the Normans.  I prefer to show the really gorey bits to my students, because really, the more you study embroidery, the more you realize it's not been about Precious Moments or Home Sweet Home until pretty recently in history.  How many British royal women passed their days in the Tower, awaiting execution, while stitching away on some bit of needlework now preserved in the Victoria and Albert museum?  Plenty.  How many bitter babes with no "voice" managed to tell it on a sampler? Too many to count. Anyway, at the conclusion of our presentation, Adam informed me there was a youtube video of the Battle of Hastings in which some clever person had animated the Bayeux Tapestry.  Check that out!  We did.  Pretty good sound effects.   We jetted then through the centuries and touched on a sampler done by an 11 year old (I could have used one done by a nine-year old, but since the students just learned to do French Knots, I didn't want to demoralize them totally.)  We then hit on some biggies from the resurgence period, as I like to think of it.  The second wave of feminism has a few big conceptual artists we have to look at - and frankly, all you young third wave crafter feminists out there should be ashamed of yourself if you don't know these people - Elaine Reichek and Annette Messager.   I was unable to find the Elaine Reichek image that shook my world as a graduate student online - I'm going to see if I can find it in an old copy of Fiberarts, because it's a killer and should be seen by all.  With Messager we just focused on her proverbs, though she's done a lot of stitched works, or deconstructed stitched work.  Moving on from there, we got to contemporary embroidery.  We looked at Hella Jongerius' embroidered ceramics; Clare Coles' embroidered wallpapers and furniture; Richard Saja's reworked toiles and glow in the dark french knots (but I skipped showing any Orly Cogan, who would be a good companion to Saja's because she works in a similar vein, her work is more pornographic than his, faint of heart be warned!) We also checked out some of the other artists who are in "Pricked, Extreme Embroidery" at the Museum of Arts and Design in NYC.  These included the Phrenology Heads by Morwenna Catt; two works by Tilleke Schwarz; and Afro Abe by Sonya Clarke.  The best compilation of images I found from the show and also a good bit of editorial can be found here.

Some themes that emerged in my search for new embroidery were that many of the artists aren't restricting themselves to just embroidery - this may seem obvious except that if you think about artists who identify as painters, they pretty much always use paint on canvas.  Lots of these artists, like the artists in the Lawton Gallery's recent Craftivism show, identify or are identified as Conceptual Artists.  The other big observation is, the work coming out of Europe, and most specifically Great Britain, tends to be the most relevant today, and isn't laboring under any crazy bad notions of cross-stitch kits and Aunt Martha's iron-on days of the week towels.  American seem to need to constantly talk about how they're "referencing the domestic" (I admit, I've done it myself multiple times - once totally confusing a Scottish curator.) There's only one Lou Cabeen and the rest of us should get over it.  I'd like to see more racial, ethnic, and historical references in American embroidery, like Sonya Clarke's Afro Abe, (which, sharply and pointedly, I find vastly more interesting than her hats and prayer bags.)  Let's face it: there's a lot more in America that can be referenced with needle and thread than "the domestic," and in case you think that's tattoos, check out what Jenny Hart does when she's making art rather than designing for her line of iron-on transfers for Sublime Stitching.   Word to the wise, the tattoo thing is just about played out.  Matthew Benedict was doing it back in '98, and no one's done any better since, in my book. 

We wrapped up our class on Monday with a quick demo of a technique I actually learned from the aforementioned Lou Cabeen, which was how to keep paper stable if you're going to stitch on it.  For those heading off to the studio here are my answers to the questions I most anticipate from anyone who's thinking of doing this: What you're looking for is by Pellon.  Do not use Stitch Witchery or Wonder Web.  The generic name for the Pellon is fusible interfacing (if you're going to the fabric store.) Place it dots side down on the back side of your paper matrix, iron with steam and not much motion on a medium heat until the dots obscure and the bond holds.  You won't be able to use a hoop for your stitching, and you can't pull stitches out without making permanent holes in the paper, but if you do a test run you'll get the hang of it.  And yes, you can take cloth out of the cabinet in 416, as long as you cut from the end, and leave a clean edge on the roll or bolt.  You're allowed to use the cotton, black or white, but don't use the silk or satin, please.