Textile collage-- a cross between a city plan and a barnacle

It all started with a piece of china which broke in the mail, sent by my friend's grandmother, who lives in Australia, to my friend in NYC.  She gave the broken pieces to me and said "Maybe you can make something with this."

Which I did.
I started stitching and attaching things. I couldn't stop.
It turned into a something of a cross between a city plan and a barnacle.

An onyx turtle, a souvenir from a childhood trip to Mexico in the late sixties.
Objects in the pie safe in my studio that I drew on fabric-- 1930's Mull Soy baby formula tin and teacups, among other things.

A ruler from one of my mom's students ca. 1970's, a seashell from Louisiana Gulf Coast, Texas pecan shell, and a Portuguese fishing weight I bought in a fishing village on the NW coast of Portugal, 1995.




I was thinking of Piero della Francesca's "Madonna of the Egg".

Hans Holbein portrait of Martin Luther on a 1983 commemorative stamp.

Old buttons, an old penny, old string, and cow bone fragments.

Reminds me of the chrysanthemum of my dreams.

Fossils from my sister's childhood collection.  She's a geologist, so that passion stuck.
A grouping of grey buttons.  I was thinking about both a grove of trees and  lukasas, the African memory boards.




The buttons  and shells help you remember what's important.

A 1970's newspaper ad for a leisure suit began to fall off almost as soon as I sewed it on, so I covered it with a button. It was made in Holland, has been in Texas the past 50+ years and is now in NYC.   I like that.

Seeds.

and thinking of Latin American Madonnas.

A stone circle made of a rock, a cow bone fragment, and the onyx feet that broke off the turtle's companion, a burro.

Orange silk from the hat I made last year for my friend.
She chose the fabric for the hat.  I'm quite sure she recognizes it.

Water pooling around a seashell. Covered buttons from my mom's dresses, 1940's-50's.
Always moving back and forth between the conceptual and the real, the tangible and intangible.

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