I stumbled upon plastic bags filled with samples of textiles, tassels & trim when we were cleaning out my mother’s closets after she died. The remnants found in those bags were pieces of her story: dreams of creating a space and place, a home that defined beauty, projected refinement, and what she would have clarified as happiness.

The result is a cloth book with richly embroidered text & patterns sewn onto a wooden clothing hanger. The text focuses on the idea of ritual as movement and movement as reading. Each copy has a unique case made from clothing, which becomes the protection of these words instead of the human body. The viewer must ‘undress’ the book in order to read it.

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Additional thoughts: 

 

I designed this book after seeing an embroidery machine and realizing that at long last my desire to put words onto these many pieces of cloth was possible. Subsequently, it also became the basis for the text used in my stairs installation. My mother’s scraps, the book, stairs & reading have become forever entwined.     

                                               

The embroideries were made possible with the assistance of Willy Duran; the machine sewing was completed with the assistance of Anderson Osmun.