2019
Memories - Dropped stitches and pulled threads. Intaglio, debossed, hand stitched embroidery embellishments. A series of prints created for the residents of Redwood Park Communities, using my Mother's handmade dollies - a limited edition primarily for the Print Exchange, a wonderful initiative gifting art to the newly homed, homeless, a token towards a renewed life. A Print Exchange For Residents of Redwood Park Communities On the theme of Welcome Home. Organized by Christina McBean and Katie Green. I don't usually create in a concrete manner, but I took this opportunity to create something that commemorated my Mother (Redente (Rita) Luchese) who died November 7, 2018. A seamstress she made the most beautiful doilies and I decided that if anything said home to me, it was those. So I created recessed relief prints (debossed) using the doilies as the matrix (plate) and embellished them with embroidery. The results were so satisfying I realized that my art making was mode of mourning to capture moments in the stillness and this has fuelled a series of work - Surviving Death: Resurrecting memory, with an exhibition planned for 2019 at the PRNT Collective, Barrie, Ontario. |
Upcoming — October 5th, 2019
“Surviving Death, Resurrecting Memories” I seem to have a need to create a body of work that is more a memorial to my late mother Redenta (Rita) Luchese an amazing seamstress she taught me not only skills of sewing also the idea of play as making - we were often enlisted to help make little doll dresses as she worked for Regal Toys. She never cared much for knitting but did pass on embroidery, crocheting and much more. In rooting through years and years of her stuff, I found some beautiful old doilies and wondered if I ever thanked her, in a way, this body of print based work may just be doing that. In using the skills she passed on and her own thread supplies I will be creating this body of work while resurrecting memories long thought lost and forgotten.