Five Hundred Years to Forever

2020, ongoing | an embroidery series
Embroidered styrofoam trays, acquired with groceries
6 x 8.25 x 1″ -or- 4 x 8.25 x 1″
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The Five Hundred Years to Forever series developed as a dialog with the styrofoam trays I acquire by shopping at my neighborhood family grocery store. It’s an ongoing series because I keep shopping there, and because they keep packing vegetables in styrofoam. I can’t throw away styrofoam in good conscience – and what if it doesn’t want to leave me, either? What about belonging, attachment, clinginess, and obligation – states of mind too often mistaken for love, and not often enough brought to bear on so-called single use materials – where do they live between us and our stuff? It’s a lovingly ironic project, embroidering a material so delicate and yet so long-lived, and the application of Valentines-y sentiments to something most often considered trash. Less ironic is the way embroidery allows meaning to be layered into objects, and the ways this body of work connect a craft I associate with embellishment to ideas that feel entirely necessary.
[The digital collage of the embroidered leaf is a related project, on view with WALK BYE’s 2020 JCAST exhibit in Jersey City Parks.]

Exhibition History
May - June 2022 | Zero to 80, SMUSH Gallery
December 2021 - January 2022 | The Gigantic Miniatures Show, Deep Space Gallery
September - October 2021 | Renaissance: A Group Exhibition, Art House Gallery at 150 Bay St
April - June 2021 | The Art Of Our Times, Snapdragon Coffee and Social
March - April 2021 | Mother Shipment, Deep Space Gallery
December 2020 - April 2021 | The Gigantic Miniature Show/More Minis, Deep Space Gallery
September - October 2020 | The Zine Shop, a pop up accompanying The Zine Show, SMUSH Gallery