With this new body of work, I engage with landscape using an interdisciplinary approach combining photography, textile and assemblage. I use from one to multiple photographs and add thread, maps, buttons and iridescent paint. I sew over and into my photographs until the sewn threads integrate with the photographic images to create a new object: phototapestries.
I draw my inspiration from nature, especially the forest and water. Some of my earliest memories are of hiking in the forest and feeling in awe of the giant trees above me. My background as a photojournalist and archaeological photographer also inform my artwork.
I begin by making archival pigment prints on kozo paper which I paint with a thin layer of acrylic medium to protect it from UV light and the sewing process. Then I begin to sew with various types of thread, mostly metallic thread.
Thread changes the photographs into something more dimensional and textural. They feel like fabric. The threads also blur the line between what’s real in the photograph and what’s beyond the picture or imagined. The metallic threads in the forest pieces evoke fairy tales and the history of the forest with no humans present.
When a piece is almost finished I sew layers of thin tengu paper around the edges to make a border. The sewing process for me is about making something interesting out of the ordinary, and in doing so elevating the idea of sewing as women’s work to that of a higher art form. I like to think of my work as creating artifacts of tomorrow.
