The piece that labelled me "cleavage-obsessed". Stitched on 18-count aida cloth, 2008.
A little history...
Needlepoint doesn't have to be boring. But somehow, it usually is. Boring to look at, and for most people, boring to make. (Not me, as I'm anal retentive...) I started cross-stitching as a school project when I was 13 years old in my Home Ec class. I stitched a bright orange peace sign for my craft module and it was ugly as hell. I even ran out of thread from the kit because I messed up so much. But I caught the bug. So I stitched everything. Teddy bears and gardens and kittens and Disney designs and flowers. Cheesy inspirational sayings and dragonflies and more flowers and more teddy bears. All the way through high school and straight into university.
So I went to university (obviously, from that previous sentence). I wanted desperately to be a fashion designer. But it turned out, I didn't really like to sew. Or draft patterns. Or pretty much anything required to be a fashion designer, other than drawing people. I started university in Human Ecology ( fancy-schmancy name for Home Economics) and after one year decided I was probably going to poke my brains out with my colored pencils. But I LOVED Orange County Choppers (especially Paul Sr.), and decided I should design motorcycles instead. So I applied to the Industrial Design program, and applied to the Fine Art program as a backup (just in case). Big surprise, I totally didn't get into the ID program, but oh well. I didn't really know anything about motorcycles anyway. But I did make it into the BFA program...
Art school was like a whole different planet. In high school, I had been one of the best at drawing and being a weirdo, and now I was in a program with ALL the best drawers and weirdos (it takes skill, y'all). I was actually kind of normal and sucky compared to everyone else. So I decided to be a realist painter, cuz that's cool. That didn't work. Definitely not qualified to be a realist painter. So I decided to be an abstract painter. I had a thing for Jackson Pollock, and tried that for a bit. I submerged my interest in chains and sexy models into modernist painting. I became (dun dun dun) an "Abstract Painter". Beautiful paintings that beautifully match your couch.
It took me three years to realize that I wasn't really making anything interesting, and that I felt like crap. The paintings were pretty, but there was nothing emotional or intellectual there for me. So I threw it all away and started over in my last year of schooling. A big F-U to the system. I started working with pornography and satire, conceptual video work and gel transfers, and everything else I could lay hands on. And my love of cross-stitching finally came out. And so did my love and interest in dissecting stereotypes and imagery of women in our media, as I was so obsessed with what I should look like and was expected to be. And then, my art was born! Ta-da!!!
In my graduating art show, I was noted by local papers as the most controversial work in the show, as "cleavage-obsessed" (I was quite proud of that). My work takes hours upon hours. Sometimes hundreds of hours. I do what I can, when I have time now - I work full-time as an admin assistant to pay the bills and co-support my pug with my husband. So here I am. Hoping to make it and find people who love my work as much as I do. Wow. Sorry, that was very "I'm just a girl... standing in front of a boy... asking him to love her." Well so be it. LOVE ME.
