I am busy getting ready for a group show in December which has led me down a new and different path. Encouraged by an artist friend to push my embroidery and my mixed media practice further, I am currently experimenting with combining collage, textile work, and text-based art.

The jumping-off point for our show is the DADA poem by Kurt Schwitters, “Ursonate.” While I made a number of abstract sketches inspired by the piece, I ultimately ended up looking at Schwitter’s collage practice. Here are some samples of his work. 

DADA was about many things, including confronting a world falling apart in the inter-war period. This was expressed in a large part through collage. So what better time to revisit this idea? Except, in my world, the news of world events comes not from print but from screens. In the DADA spirit, the images I used were screen captures combined with other random pieces of old artwork and other scraps. My first attempt at fabric transfer disintegrated, but I liked the result.

My next piece came out crisper, giving me a good background for embroidered elements:

Before long, I was making more pieces, but starting to focus more on the text and language fragments that jump out at me. These text-based pieces were all inspired by different things I heard or read in the media. Each of them kind of stuck to my brain and are still rattling around in there.

Stay tuned for more about the show and about this embroidery project, which is still in development (and may continue long after this particular event is over.) That’s all for now!