Puffy Patchwork Pieces/Some Reflections

Hi,

This year has been a lot and I am not going to dig into all the things here, but I will touch on them because as an artist—even though I mostly stitch pictures of plants and interior scenes—everything that I experience impacts and shapes the art I make and the business that I run. I will only be speaking to my individual, personal experience here and absolutely do not claim any insights into how this year has impacted anyone else. We can all tell our own stories, we should, and we should listen to and believe each other.

I want to share some reflections on some simultaneously surprising (to me) and long in the making bodies of work I created this year (and that I hope to expand upon in 2021 and beyond), but before I get into that I have to back it up and reflect on the life of my business + the past 7 years of having a dedicated art practice. Because my creativity and our DIY business is our sole source of income, I feel I am constantly seeking balance between indulging in pure creativity defined not by any outcome but rather driven by process and practice, and managing the logistics, expectations, and work that goes into designing, creating, marketing, and selling the work that keeps us housed and fed. It’s a system that I have very much opted into, feel very fortunate to be a part of and, to an extent, in control of. Earning a living from my artistic output is an extreme privilege and joy and I do not take it for granted. And of course, I could not do it without the incredible support of this community.

All that being said, writing and reflecting now from the end of 2020, I am feeling exhausted and uninspired. I have fizzled out. I am still working everyday, stitching and designing, but it is mostly feeling like an exercize driven by necessity rather than passion. Over the years I have learned to recognize patterns; ebbs and flows to my creativity and I think I am getting better at respecting them and fully experiencing them rather than trying to force myself to change, speed up, or slow down. I have also come to learn that really understanding the personal significance to my work often comes a while after it is finished. I can’t seem to analyze while I am creating. I have to go through the process of making before I can reflect and understand what it is that I have made. For example, I felt compelled to start stitching house plants back in 2014 because I was struggling to keep our plants alive in our dark + drafty apartment in Albany. When we moved to Menorca for a couple of years in 2015 I introduced lone female figures into my work as a reflection of my own feelings of isolation and anxiety adapting to a new culture and language barrier. And now, I don’t know, I can’t analyze the experience of 2020 and the ways this year has impacted my work because I am still going through it.

But I can share a bit about some of the pieces I made in early spring when things were really flowing for me in the studio. I made two collections of work that are continuations of ideas that span many years and build upon techniques that I have played with on and off since I was in high school. The first collection I want to dig a little deeper into is the series of five ‘Puffy Patchworks’ pieces I made—or rather finished—this spring.

These pieces, made from saved [hoarded] bits of fabric trimmed from the edges of embroideries and stuffed with thread scraps, really began in my ‘Mixed Media’ and painting classes in high school. I developed a deep interest in the process and byproducts of making art—in under paintings, rags for wiping brushes, paint dried on palettes, and other things used in the process of making and then discarded or cleaned up. Back then (2008ish), I started cutting up and stitching back together my painting rags. I was fascinated by the way absent minded wiping and cleaning of brushes created spontaneous and perfect abstract compositions of color and texture and how I could then manipulate those marks into new compositions through a process of deconstruction and reconstruction. I even stretched some of the re-pieced paint rags over stretcher bars and used them as a base for new paintings. While I didn’t continue that avenue of exploration in college (I didn’t paint at all, though it is where I dipped my toes into stitching for the first time), the appreciation for cycles and process as a base for everything else was instilled in me and has only solidified in me since then.

Fast forward to early winter of 2019, I was experiencing a real creative rut, feeling burnt out, and struggling to find direction or purpose in my work (not completely unlike how I am feeling now to be honest—cycles and patterns) and I returned to this process of cutting up and putting back together, but this time I was using left over fabric from my embroideries. I spent a few days using my mother-in-law’s sewing machine (she also happens to be a really incredible potter and you can check out her work here!) creating patchworks. The process itself was exactly what I needed. It wasn’t driven by any intended outcome, but was a simple exploration into material and repetitive motion (one of the aspects of hand embroidery that I love so much and even though stitching on a machine might not seem like such a jump, it was a wonderful break from my usual). Being open to a process outside of my usual methods and the learning that comes with a new piece of equipment and set of parameters was nourishing and refreshing. The creative exploration allowed space for me to remember what it was that I loved about the main work that I do and that spark of inspiration allowed me to get back to work and find forward momentum again. And the patchworks I made sat in a tidy pile in the corner of my studio until this year.

The pandemic classification of COVID-19 and subsequent shutdowns happened a couple of weeks before Davey and I were supposed to travel to Japan to visit my sister and explore a bit of the country. Of course, it became evident in March that that trip wasn’t going to happen and I decided to grant myself a stay-home artist-in-residence experience. That might sound a little funny from someone who is an artist and makes a living from art—why and what even is that? I decided that, since the time was already blocked out and separated from the ongoing needs of our business, I would spend a few weeks making whatever I wanted and pursuing whatever ideas or creative experiences popped into my head. I tried to eliminate any internal or external pressure or expectation to make anything ‘good’ and I consciously worked to remove the idea of an end product from the process of making.

It was an amazing and challenging few weeks. I made so much stuff. So much ‘bad’ stuff. So much ‘weird’ stuff. And so much stuff that I will never talk about or show to anyone because it was all such an intense and personal exploration. It was a freeing few weeks. As someone who uses Instagram heavily as a marketing tool and platform to share my work, I have been deeply conditioned by that space—the need to (or feeling of the ‘need’ to) constantly push out new work at a relentless pace to keep up with/stay relevant to the algorithm and the dangerous-to-creativity pattern of external validation and feedback loops of praise and criticism. Having developed my the bulk of artistic/professional practice as it is today publicly in that digital space, I have to question how much the audience and community have influenced what it is I make in conscious and subconscious ways. My stay-home residency was a break from that and my puffy patchwork pieces were one of the results. This collection of work, in some ways, feels like the most authentic body of work I have ever created or shared. And it is a strong departure from the type of work that has built my business and create a degree of success and stability in my life.

Botanical embroideries and DIY projects aren’t going anywhere. And this year has been brutal in so many ways. But I reclaimed a bit of artistic freedom from and for myself this year and for that one tiny and personal thing, I will forever be grateful.

If you’re still with me, thanks so much for reading and sharing space and time with me. On another day I will share more about the other new mixed media work I created this year.