Future Sand
This monumental print installation is a memento mori that I made from a sketchbook drawing. The intimate colored pencil study was scanned, blown up, and translated into an embroidery pattern on pixel-stitch.net. The shells-turned-cliffs tower over the body as the data draws you closer.
It’s the same shell, from two different angles. I’m interested in creating an experience of alternating viewing in this piece. The eye focuses on coded language at close range, then wants to blur back to make sense of the larger image. In meditation, sometimes stillness can come through intentionally blurring the vision.
Future Sand
installed in the Wilson Gallery at Georgetown College
2023
Sand Stitch R5A
2023
acrylic screen print, inkjet, and shell emulsion on paper
24 x 20 inches
Sand Stitch: Excerpts from Future Sand
Excerpt panels from Future Sand become individual landscapes when removed from the diptych. Composition is randomly imposed by the installation’s larger grid, framed by the edges of the paper and subtly reinforced by the centered white rectangle.
The first layer is the brushed-on coating of powdered seashells that gives the paper an iridescent shine. Over that, flat acrylic ink in a hexagonal, sacred geometry pattern. Inkjet is the top layer, printed edge to edge. Ascending in visual complexity, each layer is detectable in varying strengths depending on your proximity. Different surface lusters add to this effect. The lightweight mulberry paper takes on a heaviness from all the material it carries.
Sand Stitch L4C
Sand Stitch L2B
Sand Stitch R4C
Sand Stitch R2E
Sand Stitch L4D
Sand Stitch L3A
The Coded Language of Embroidery
Many women will recognize these symbols from cross-stitch patterns. This is a language read in defiance of the top-to-bottom, left-brained order prescribed by most Western writing systems. This is a language you read associatively: grouping and contrasting freely around the grid. While the left hemisphere is concerned with detail and control, the right brain is relational, focused on the bigger picture.
Embroidery codes have used these symbols for decades, with generations of women passing time translating the glyphs into objects of beauty and subversion. I use this language to connect to a lineage of textile workers, to convey the weight of time.
