Tactile Techno

I'm fascinated with time - how it is cyclic. This fabric book I made and embroidered with conductive thread is a mix of old with new. LEDs light up digitally screen printed images on textured linen. Modern technology is used with old images and fabric to invoke a nostalgic longing.

The image below shows lights, stitched into the embroidery with conductive thread. I programmed the lights on my computer to flash rhythmically. Enlightened sensitive, fingertips.

I'm now selling the last few copies of these craft books. They're great for pressies, go to:  http://stitchfriends.bigcartel.com/

Adore Takashi Murakami.

Soft toys flower ball!

Another Takashi ( the name must be imbued with creative powers) Takashi Iwasaki

Manages to make embroidery lines appear loosely hand-painted or drawn. To me the embroideries are reminiscent of Paul Klee.

fabric of life

For one of the final projects before she died, New York artist, Louise Bourgeois recycled her old clothes into poetry. "Ode â l'Oubli" ("Ode to Forgetfulness),' is her beautiful fabric book. Its a tactile diary of her long, trans-Atlantic life. "I want to re-experience the past, I try to reconstruct it. ... Sudden recollections that are awakened by the senses tell you more than emotions that are too vague or too overwhelming or too intractable,"

Well-used fabric has that ability to embody both a communal, historical moment and a local, specific story. Inhering in fabric is the fabric of our lives.

I found this the other day by British Ceramic Artist and Writer Edmund de Waal:

Craft is a starting place, a set of possibilities.
It avoids absolutes, certainties, over-robust definitions, solace.
It offers places, interstices, where objects and people meet.
It is unstable, contingent.
It is about experience.
It is about desire.
It can be beautiful.

— Edmund de Waal

I love the obsessiveness behind these two videos.