Extreme Embroidery

Today I went to see Pricked: Extreme Embroidery at Museum of Art and Design. I was thinking of going to see Martin Puryear at MOMA, but I felt I needed to see something slightly less predictable. I made the mistake of looking at the Martin Puryear show online, which is an amazing web display of the work, but it made me much less interested in going to see the show.

Pricked did not disappoint. There was such an interesting survey of contemporary embroidery. Tilleke Schwarz work is intricate and overloaded with images and words to get lost in for hours. Her pieces are arranged more like paintings or collages than tradition embroidery samplers. Andrea Dezsö's piece is composed of many small square embroideries arranged in a grid, each with a witty saying starting with words "my mother claimed that..." and an tiny charming, delicate, and often funny illustration to match. Susie Brandt's piece was also lovely and probably my favorite. It was made of falling circles and dots cut out of patterned fabric, that floated in the air and gathered on the floor below, suspended in thread you could barely see. I also enjoyed the work of Nava Lubelski. She/He (?) embroiders over top of stains on canvas and found fabric to create pieces that are beautiful and brightly colored with an interesting texture difference between the embroidered spaces and the raw fabric underneath.

I was excited to see the work of Orly Cogan and Laura Splan in person for the first time. But I found Cogan's piece to be slightly lackluster, while still amusing. Splan's work was made with impecable technical skill, but it seemed to feel cold and detached from my human experience, which could be the opposite effect Splan had in mind.