The Butterfly Collection: A Glimpse of my Process

This is a glimpse of a work I recently finished. It’s for a show of my work at SŌMI Gallery that opens in July and it’s from a newly ongoing body of work that I’ve started thinking of as The Butterflies. I resisted bringing butterflies into my work for a long time—I think because of their inherent and obvious beauty—but now that they’ve made their way in I can’t seem to stop making them. They so well represent the transitory space between the material and non-material worlds that I’m always chasing in my art.

The photo above is the back view of a piece held up to light so you can see the hole punch stage of my process. This stage is completed after all the painted and drawn layers are done. I draw my design for the embroidery layer onto the other layers and punch holes through all of them with a homemade awl. This stage of the process is pretty unforgiving since there’s no way to repair misplaced holes, so it’s done slowly and methodically.

The next step is to stitch the design. Though not seen here, I usually keep my drawing nearby as a reference in order to find my way around the pattern. This stage always, always, always takes me longer than I think it will.

I love the texture that the thread brings to the piece. The embroidery transforms the delicate layers into a single, durable entity.

This piece and others will soon go into frames for the July show.