I’m SO grateful to be a part of the Threads gallery! Thank you to Emma and The Juvenis Festival for giving SPACE to textile art!👽💫🚀 In these pieces, I used carved block prints, some screen print and embroidery. It’s been exciting to find that all my favourite art hobbies can tie together and accentuate each other’s strengths in a single work.
That’s an overall concept that I find is crucial when bringing together anything. Tying threads of connection between things that might seem different is a powerful way to strengthen something old, or create something new.
I’ve admired embroidery for years, though I’ve only recently considered myself “able” to do it. I used to always end up with a giant tangle (truly, you have to understand–SUCH a giant, horrible frustratingly messy tangle🙂!). It was just really difficult for me. I decided it was impossible for me. I decided this was something I was unable to do, and I affixed a phrase that my struggles in other areas have sometimes been labeled with. When talking about embroidery, I’d say that my “I just can’t organize my motor skills for it, in a way that works ”. Every single person I’ve ever said that phrase to, responded with a version of, “If you just keep trying, it’ll work out” (yay for supportive friends😁!). I found it really hard to believe them at all, but as art projects kept calling out for thread-y decoration, I kept creating knotted messes anyway. In December, during one of those attempts, I found myself with a lot less tangle, and a lot more art. Things just started working. After spending a really long time thinking that I physically could not possibly sort out the mental organization, and fine motor skills that embroidery asks for, the process became smoother and it quickly became a favourite pastime of mine.
This process happens in different extremes whenever I approach anything, and I find it’s especially well-expressed through “Threads”. Often the same material that’s part of a messy tangle can become something you’re really proud of, and the same thread that was once thrown away because it was “not right” is the exact same thread that, with time, untangles into what you’d hoped it to be.