Materials: Fabric, acrylic paint, watercolor paint, thread, glass beads
Size: 60×70 cm
Available for Purchase
This piece depicts a woman contemplating the stages of her life as she undergoes the changes of middle age. The figure is stitched using freehand embroidery on the sewing machine. Details were added using acrylic and watercolor paints. 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 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.