Thursday, January 24, 2013

Wish Tree & Cherry Tree

&Stitches Inspiration



Browsing Flickr just for fun the other day, I came across a couple of pieces by Ana Raimundo of Fric de Mentol that combine screenprinting and embroidery in such a lovely and delicate way, I immediately contacted her to learn more about them. Lucky for us, Ana was kind enough to tell us about them in her own words.
The 'Wish Tree' [above] is hand screen printed and hand embroidered, it belongs to a collection of drawings with silhouettes of trees. It's a continuous work I've been doing, searching for tree bodies, capturing their shapes, organic elegance and their mystery (or at least I think trees keep secrets), that could dress the tiny details made with thread and needle.
This tree was specially created to welcome the new year, with many branches and a very round top, waiting for all the fruits and for the journey of the year. The embroidery details are like tiny twigs.

The 'Cherry Tree' is also a mixed media artwork, it is screen printed on linen and mixed with cotton thread details and little red French Knots, representing the luminous cherry. The colors are carefully chosen to best represent the real colors of these trees.
It's inspired and made in a small Portuguese village - Rio de Mel - with a strong meaning for me, it's where my grandparents were from and I've known the place since I was born. The village has plenty of these yummy Cherry Trees however, unfortunately, the small village was devastated by a fire last summer and many trees were lost. Among my work which mostly consists of the representation of trees, I've been re-planting some little areas and as an artist is my mission to share and mix this feeling of telling to the public we need to live with trees. I really care if the next generations will know what a tree looks like.
I am just so smitten with Ana's work - I've been returning to her websites over and over this week to admire it. You definitely have to check out her blog, Dropes de Mentol, and her etsy shop and see how wonderfully she combines embroidery, screenprinting, and illustration.

Julie is a knitter and stitcher, born in the US but now living in the UK. She loves vintage embroidery books and bad slasher movies. With her mum, Julie designs embroidery patterns inspired by literature under the name Little Dorrit & Co.

BlogShopTwitter

3 comments:

  1. Thank you so much for having my trees in this enjoyable pleasant place and for the chance of talking a little bit about them :)

    Also thank you for your passion with embroidery and for the articles you collect around it, that's precious!
    Warm hug!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Oh, Ana, I'm so glad you like the post! I have so enjoyed learning about your work, and was happy to have the chance to talk about it!

      Delete
  2. I'm really liking both of these pieces and the stories behind both of them.

    ReplyDelete

Hi there, thank you for stopping by &Stitches. The blog is no longer updated, but you can still explore the archive of posts. Because the blog is no longer active, new comments have been disabled. Thank you for understanding. :-)

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.