Monday, May 26, 2014

In the hoop with... Sam Gibson

In the Hoop With - header


This monthly feature is called 'In the hoop' but it's more 'Out of the hoop' today because the embroidery Sam Gibson is working on is very large. My attention to Sam's project was drawn when she mentioned something on Twitter about a very large project that involved embroidering with a post mortem needle. Intriguing right? I just needed to know more about it and Sam kindly shared with us her inspiration for this particular project:

I had been interested for some time in fingerprints and had sewn and sold a small hooped fingerprint a couple of years ago. I was interested to note how the fingerprint on the forefinger of my left hand had changed due to sewing injury, it had been cut, stabbed and generally mashed up. This flew into the face of fingerprints being permanent and unchanging.




I also loved the idea of sewing a huge fingerprint image, perverting the simple accessible nature of using fingerprints in biometric identification. They are cheap, quick and easy to produce, this work by contrast isn't cheap to produce will take a long time and be painful to sew. The work is 180 cm by 110 cm. I took a fingerprint of my messed up forefinger, photographed it, manipulated it in Photoshop and projected it onto the stretched canvas. The image was drawn on in different colours to denote the various shades of black and grey threads.



Thank you Sam for sharing this great project with us. We'll be checking back with Sam and follow the progress of this piece and other work too, as she is planning to do a series of these big embroideries. 

What are you stitching? Please share in the &Stitches Flickr group or let us know on Twitter . We'd love to see it!

1 comment:

  1. Wow, what an interesting and unusual idea! Can't wait to see the series :)

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