Shannon Rankin

Shannon Rankin's work is delicate and stunning. I took a peek at her flickr stream to see what she's been up to lately. Looks like she has new work that will be on display in February:

Enormous Tiny Art Show
February, 6th, 2009
Nahcotta Gallery
Portsmouth, NH

Link

Tiny Jiva

I've made some more progress on the collaboration with Jim Woodring. Here is the tiniest Jiva yet.

Link

Coccinelle

One of my earliest embroidered portraits was of Coccinelle, France's famous cabaret singer and also Europe's first recipient of a widely publicized gender reassignment.

This is also the first and only piece that I worked entirely in rayon floss. The look is shimmery and pearlescent, which suits Coccinelle nicely, but rayon is so slippery and difficult to stitch, that I never worked with it again after this piece.

Here's Coccinelle in action. Singing a cheeky and playful song asking, not so innocently, "Mais, qu'est-ce que j'ai donc?" ("What is it about me?"). And, that lithe young man who is the last to take a seat in the at the table? The one with the feathery blond pompadour? Mmmmhm.

Link

Link to Wikipedia entry on Coccinelle

The Sultan's Elephant

A parade in Nantes, France, of giant marionettes playing out the story of a little girl who's crashed landed on our planet, and begins playing, destructively, with everything around her.
These are cars she stitched to the earth.

Link

Giant Embroidery

A little over a year ago, I took advantage of a chain-link fence at Maker Faire to show other ways embroidery can be executed, interact with a plane, and how any surface offers up ways to be embroidered. Chain-link fences are particularly enticing.

I have been interested in creating 'Giant Embroidery' for some time. Making embroidery stitches into giant, visually discernable shapes. Embroidery is always thought of as so minute and tiny, that my interest has been about making it bigger. Easier to see. Easier to understand, and less mysterious. Both as art, and as a method for teaching it. I like to use all six strands when I work (not the tradition and considered to be a less refined technique, I suppose) so my stitches appear chunky and the texture isn't lost. While I admire fine lines in thread, I like something to look 'embroidered'. I like to see the hand in it. I like to see the stitches. Embroidery was mysterious to me for such a long time, and the simple fact of understanding how to do it brought me into a tiny world I understood more easily, and I wanted to magnify it to show others.




Rayna Fahey of Radical Cross Stitch in Melbourne, Australia, has also been inspired by fences for political messages and outside art installations. "Fence Weaving" by wrapping wool yarn around areas of the fence to spell out site-specific messages and political, group commentary. Wonderfulness.

Revolutionary Craft Circle Fence Weaving

also see:
Giant Isolated Chain Stitch
Fence Embroidery
Lace Fence

WIP

Slowly but surely, more work has been done on this piece, that I've been stitching on since April of '08. You can see it at various stages here (scroll down) and here.

Link