Materials: Fabric, acrylic paint, watercolor paint, thread, plastic film, glass beads
Created in 2024
Size: 60×70 cm
In a Private Collection
This piece depicts a woman contemplating the stages of her life as she undergoes the changes of middle age. She is a reflection of myself. I stitched the figure using using freehand embroidery on the sewing machine. I used watercolor paints on the face, allowing them to spread as they would but leaving some areas open to form highlights. I used acrylic paints on the butterfly and the shirt. At first, I considered the wrinkles in the shirt to be a mistake. However, I often end up in a very wrinkled shirt by the end of the day, so I think this was just my subconscious letting that happen within the piece. The flowers and necklace were cut from custom-made fabric designs and then embellished with glass beads. The custom-made fabric was created from images of my previous artwork. I used design software to manipulate photos of my work to create new patterns for the fabric, essentially creating custom collage pieces from my previous art. I consider this to be a new evolution of my work and will be using a photograph of this piece to construct new designs for more custom fabric. Each generation of work grows from the previous generation. The only act of destruction is in the cutting and manipulation of the fabrics.
The figure has three faces. One face is looking down at a butterfly resting on a crystal. The crystal represents the outer shell the woman puts around herself to shield herself from the world. The butterfly represents transformation. It has just emerged from the crystal. Several times, I have heard that a middle-aged woman is like a butterfly in a chrysalis. Once through middle age, she will emerge beautiful and wise. In this piece, we see the woman sadly looking downward at the butterfly. She then looks outward towards the viewer before turning her gaze upwards toward a butterfly that is flying away. The woman in this piece is wondering when her time to emerge wise and beautiful will come, or if it is just a myth.
This piece is part of The Fabric of Who We Are Exhibition with the Surface Design Association,
This piece was created as part of the Remix Residency Project. I had the idea for this piece for over a month. Then, in a burst of energy, l finished it in 4 days. The process for this piece is documented through video.