I’m trying to keep up a sort of regular ‘feature’ on über embroiderers on The Smallest Forest: These are the big kids, the crème de la crème, the leet of needle and thread…that runts like me long to play with, but will never even exist in the same universe with…
Not necessarily technical virtuosos or professional embroiderers, but artists who do strange, new and wonderfully unusual things with embroidery…creativity, concept, media, message. Just…different, somehow.
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Maricor / Maricar have done it again. Hong Kong Airport commissioned them to do billboard graphics celebrating the food of the world. The word “Delicious” is spelled out in different languages, the letters made up of images of the foods from that particular region.
The über embroiderers designed these whimsical letter forms in various alphabets, and then stitched them up beautifully. The colors and clever play between images of yummy things and letter forms is a real treat for the senses. Impeccable work, as usual, ladies!
I’m trying to keep up a sort of regular ‘feature’ on über embroiderers on The Smallest Forest: These are the big kids, the crème de la crème, the leet of needle and thread…that runts like me long to play with, but will never even exist in the same universe with. *stabs herself with a #24 chenille* Oh, crewel world!
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Where are all these really fantastic male embroiderers coming from? It’s as though there were some secret monastery in the hinterlands of, say, Romania, where men are being taught to master the sorts of things that women used to learn in convent schools a hundred years ago (but no more).
You know what? I don’t think I’ll say anything at all about Max Colby’s hand embroideries (and some fabric, mixed-media collages) on collagraph prints (on handmade paper). His work takes me out of this world, it’s just so…ah, heck, go have a look for yourself. I sit here trembling with excitement, joy, and wonder…but also (I’ll be honest) with a touch of unease and miserable yearning. This guy is good. Really good.
But enough. His website and his blog are choc full of printmaking prowess and embroidered tremendousness, and I am impatient to put this post up now, so that I can go and look at more of his art. I’ll probably run into a few of you there!
On his website, his biography reads:
Max Colby is a mixed-media artist currently working in Boston, MA. He is a self-taught tailor and fibers artist with a formal background in printmaking and papermaking. By utilizing extravagant embellishments and applications in conjunction with fragile and dwindling figures both ephemeral (print) and physical (sculptural), the stress of Max’s work is placed on external manifestations of identity construction as a highly performative act. In 2012, Max received a BFA with a concentration in printmaking and papermaking from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.
It’s been a long time since I scoured the internet for an über embroiderer. I think it’s because I’m reluctant to have this blog turn into some kind of curatorial mirror of other people’s work…just another ‘pin board’ that raves about the same things that other blogs do, pulling in creative ideas from elsewhere and not producing anything original of its own.
But Ana Teresa Barboza’s embroidered pieces were too good to pass by. Wish I could say I found them myself, but I’m not really that keen a surfer—the hours one must devote to combing blogs and sites for ‘material’ are, to me, better spent making something with my own hands; so I was alerted to these fantastic embroideries of Barboza by The Artful Desperado, whose far more cutting-edge blog undoubtedly lives with its fingers on the pulse of art and design.
Once again, amazing work coming from South America (judging by her CV, Barboza is Peruvian)…and this really makes me wonder how many more über embroiderers (and artists of other disciplines) doing really fresh, incredible things, are missed because they don’t turn up in, say, the first 20 search results of an english-language search engine. There must be hundreds. South America is really starting to look like a kind of petri dish for creativity and new approaches to art, craft, design. But one almost has to be there, immersed in the cities where they work, as well as in the language, to discover them.
Kris and I are moving to S.America in two years’ time, and I have been making notes of all these artists and projects and places that I would like to meet/visit in preparation for that time. It’s getting so that I can hardly contain myself, I want to go now, now, NOW! (But wait, need to earn some money, first, so maybe it’s time to wrap up this post and get back to work!)
Much more to see on her blog so be sure to pay a visit. I only went two or three pages deep…who knows what treasures hide in the archives of Barboza’s posts!
I’m trying to keep up a sort of regular ‘feature’ on über embroiderers on The Smallest Forest: These are the big kids, the crème de la crème, the leet of needle and thread…that runts like me long to play with, but will never even exist in the same universe with. *stabs herself with a #24 chenille* Oh, crewel world!
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Check out these jewel-brilliant embroideries by the artist Lorena Marañon! Her embroidery work is perfection, and I am in love with her embroidered art pieces—Kaleidoscope Studies (above) and Kinderatom (below)—only slightly more than with her embroidered jewelry pieces.
I’m really amazed by how well-finished the jewelry pieces are, too…everything is so well-planned and minimalist, it really reveals a beautiful mind behind it all. Does she not totally rock the vogue for geometric shapes (triangles, especially) and bold, contrasting colors?
She’s absolutely stunning, to boot…on her website, Lorena models the Embroidered Jewelry collection for 2010, herself. I am smitten with craft crush.
My personal favorite is this irregularly shaped mass of tumbling blocks in the necklace just below…
Lorena Marañón, born 1988 in Holguin, Cuba. Emigrated 1997 to Miami, FL. Miami International University of Art & Design for Fashion Merchandising. Currently living and working in Denver, CO. (source: website)
Mmmm-mmm, YUMMEH! Sunbursts and kaleidoscopes and pyramids of tropical color…there is so much amazing art, design, and crafting talent coming out of Central and South America, I could probably limit all my Google searches to en Español and never run out of über embroiderers!
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Lorena’s website is here, and she keeps a blog here.
I’m trying to keep up a sort of regular ‘feature’ on über embroiderers on The Smallest Forest: These are the big kids, the crème de la crème, the leet of needle and thread…that runts like me long to play with, but will never even exist in the same universe with. *stabs herself with a #24 chenille* Oh, crewel world!
He also creates these hybrid works using acrylic paints and stitching…
and works the same mixed-media magic on vintage papers like maps:
I love the fun and colors of his animal paintings on maps, particularly this fat panda:
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Besides loving Jose Romussi’s work, you simply must admit that men who stitch are HOT (at least in my book they are!)
Hmm, another “item” to add to my list of Things I Want To Do When I Go To Chile.
Don’t nobody tell Kris.
I’m trying to keep up a sort of regular ‘feature’ on über embroiderers on The Smallest Forest: These are the big kids, the crème de la crème, the leet of needle and thread…that runts like me long to play with, but will never even exist in the same universe with…
Not necessarily technical virtuosos or professional embroiderers, but artists who do strange, new and wonderfully unusual things with embroidery…creativity, concept, media, message. Just…different, somehow.
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Getting a kick out of Shaun Kardinal’s embroidered + collaged pieces…the clean, geometrical lines of his shapes and stitching contrast strikingly against the vintage postcards in muted colors of textbook landscapes and manmade structures in washed-out stillness.
Something about the juxtaposition makes me think of the planet viewed through alien eyes, or what the watercolours by alien tourists would look like. Vaguely familiar, and yet…disturbing. Inhuman, somehow. A mesh or grid hanging hugely over the scene like a web of laserlight coordinates for landing UFOs. Must be all that B-grade sci-fi in my youth…
But they’re compelling and delightful, anyway! The small size of postcards must make these works feel very precious.
The recent stitching-on-paper trend has been given a refreshingly (do I dare to say this?) masculine feel in Shaun’s pieces…those regular, precise, symmetrical, minimalist lines are almost industrial, no? I like it. I like his hard-edged, novel approach to working with needle and thread.
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Just as an aside, I’m so intrigued by this whole working with paper thing…I’ve a hundred ideas for it, myself, and nothing would be easier to do, but at the moment they are still heavily influenced by what others have done. So I am leaving them to sit on their own for a while, I want to see whether something grows organically from it all that will contribute to the conversation, not just mimick someone else.
I’m trying to keep up a sort of regular ‘feature’ on über embroiderers on The Smallest Forest: These are the big kids, the crème de la crème, the leet of needle and thread…that runts like me long to play with, but will never even exist in the same universe with. *stabs herself with a #24 chenille* Oh, crewel world!
(Note: compiled from several sources…please click on an image to visit its source)
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I love the busy, quirky, narrative-style embroideries by foremost Thai textile artist Jakkai Siributr. Something about all those random little seed stitches producing a quilted effect on padded fabric really makes me happy.
Also, I’m powerfully drawn to what resemble thread drawings of scenes from Thai life (more often than not satirical) His anthropomorphic animals and crowds of little naked people are irresistibly humorous. The works are highly ornamental, detailed, beautifully executed, and even when drawing on contemporary Thai religious kitsch, have been reined in by Jakkai’s manipulating to reflect a slightly edgier aesthetic, as well as a potent message.
As he states in an interview with some young art enthusiasts in an Art Babble video (embedded below) he hasn’t exhibited in Thailand for a while—fortunately, he says, because the political and critical message of his current work would probably incense quite a few people in his native country. Brave of him, in that he is the great-great-great-grandson of one of Thailand’s most beloved and revered monarchs. One wonders how Jakkai’s work is received by his family…
Siributr’s use of craft—embroidery and textile design, in particular— as the means to get his message across is unusual and effective. Craft methods are (still) an unexpected outsider in the art world, and their use defies categorization. It is precisely this “outsider” status that signals a works aim to be disruptive, unconventional, and subversive.
Artists who employ craft, from Grayson Perry to Ghada Amer, are diverse; and the politics and history of craft are skewed by the current contexts of a global labour force that is predominately female and forms of advanced capitalism that can assimilate the so-called alternative of the handmade*. —Brian Curtin for Frieze Magazine
(*Italics are mine)
From a PDF on mousework archives is this brief artist’s cv from a past exhibit:
While Jakkai’s tapestry paintings are overwhelmingly contemporary, his artistic lineage and significant ancestry provides a fascinating glimpse into royal court life in Thailand, hinting at some of the psychological and societal pressure that meld his art.
Considered one of Thailand’s most influential artists of his time, Jakkai’s grandfather was HSH Prince Subha Svasti, a grandson of King Mongkut (Rama IV), the monarch made famous in the Anna and the King memoirs. A keen painter and photographer who often depicted the pomp of court life, Prince Subha Svasti’s works include a magnificent portrait of his cousin King Prachathipok (Rama VII).
Born in Bangkok, Thailand in 1969, Jakkai Siributr graduated with a B.A. in Textile/Fine Arts from Indiana University in 1992. He received an M.S. in Textile Design from the Philadelphia University (Philadelphia College of Textiles and Sciences) in 1996 and was awarded a Bellagio grant by the Rockefeller Foundation in 2001.
