fragmented flowers
dimensions variable | hand-embroidery on fabric
Watching the slow and painful process of death messes with one’s head. I knew events were happening, deadlines passing, and life was moving on without me, but I could honestly care less. It was the opposite of feeling numb. Perhaps the best way of explaining it was that I was feeling too much. I was feeling so much that my mind was saying that it did not have the capacity to process another feeling. My core was fracturing.
I sat at my grandfather’s bedside, watching him jolt out of restless sleep, surrounded by all these flowers: some whole and blooming while others caught in various stages of decay – wilting with petals falling one-by-one. Staring at the flowers and pieces of flowers for much too long, I began thinking about how to visually capture this in-between moment. It was a space in between milestones marked by an acute emotional state where one is unable to make out the details. Embroidery, abstraction, and color became tools for me to explore this idea.
I was exploring pain, peace, and chaos while embroidering my view: the view of flowers from a seat next to my grandfather’s bed. I noted how flowers themselves are neutral. They can mark a variety of occasions: some happy (anniversary, congratulations, romance) and others, not so (funeral, get well, cheer up). This one motif could be seen from multiple perspectives: while flowers might make one smile, they might make another cry.
Just as I was experiencing feelings that could not be explained or accurately described, so I wanted the work to reflect this, too. Because of abstraction’s inherent inability to “explain,” abstracting flowers came to represent my emotional in-between space. My abstracted flowers stood for this in-between state I was in – would my grandfather live or die – and the un-surety of the outcome. In the same way, the flowers are in an in-between state: not quite flowers, but not quite not flowers. They implied possibilities: perhaps the geometric shapes would get clearer and be more readable as flowers or perhaps they were going to further abstract and become something else completely.
Color was my vehicle to signal emotions. My early pieces from this series – made during the end of my grandfather’s life – employ somber and muted corals, greens, and pinks. Other pieces, later in the series, utilize brighter and more colorful hues such as bright fuchsia, sunny yellow, and cobalt blue. At some point, I began selecting colors purely based on feeling. I would look down at my embroidery box of neatly wound floss organized by color and select whichever hue spoke to me, whether it made sense visually to the pattern I was working on, or not. By working this way, the pieces became portraits of feelings –showcasing the range of nameless emotions one can feel.
I sat at my grandfather’s bedside, watching him jolt out of restless sleep, surrounded by all these flowers: some whole and blooming while others caught in various stages of decay – wilting with petals falling one-by-one. Staring at the flowers and pieces of flowers for much too long, I began thinking about how to visually capture this in-between moment. It was a space in between milestones marked by an acute emotional state where one is unable to make out the details. Embroidery, abstraction, and color became tools for me to explore this idea.
I was exploring pain, peace, and chaos while embroidering my view: the view of flowers from a seat next to my grandfather’s bed. I noted how flowers themselves are neutral. They can mark a variety of occasions: some happy (anniversary, congratulations, romance) and others, not so (funeral, get well, cheer up). This one motif could be seen from multiple perspectives: while flowers might make one smile, they might make another cry.
Just as I was experiencing feelings that could not be explained or accurately described, so I wanted the work to reflect this, too. Because of abstraction’s inherent inability to “explain,” abstracting flowers came to represent my emotional in-between space. My abstracted flowers stood for this in-between state I was in – would my grandfather live or die – and the un-surety of the outcome. In the same way, the flowers are in an in-between state: not quite flowers, but not quite not flowers. They implied possibilities: perhaps the geometric shapes would get clearer and be more readable as flowers or perhaps they were going to further abstract and become something else completely.
Color was my vehicle to signal emotions. My early pieces from this series – made during the end of my grandfather’s life – employ somber and muted corals, greens, and pinks. Other pieces, later in the series, utilize brighter and more colorful hues such as bright fuchsia, sunny yellow, and cobalt blue. At some point, I began selecting colors purely based on feeling. I would look down at my embroidery box of neatly wound floss organized by color and select whichever hue spoke to me, whether it made sense visually to the pattern I was working on, or not. By working this way, the pieces became portraits of feelings –showcasing the range of nameless emotions one can feel.