Your Medium Finds You

I was surrounded by textiles and needlework as a kid. My Dad and Grandpa were textile jobbers and had an office in Soho, right on Canal Street during the ‘80s. I marveled at the warehouse like office that had rolls upon rows of fabric, while also wanting absolutely nothing to do with it. My Mom was a stay at home mother when I was young, and her hobby of choice was needlepoint. We had pillows and framed art and other knick-knacks around the house, which I also didn’t really want to learn at the time, because I was the kid that wanted to find my own creative outlet.

For years, that was writing. I used to write poetry, short stories, and was an avid reader. Then I dabbled in photography and worked at a stock photography agency while also getting freelance gigs from product gigs in the early dot com era, to event and portrait gigs. Juggling a full-time job while working nights and weekends created a production avalanche that resulted in sacrificing photography for work.

And for years, I would choose work over creativity and fell into a creative void as I toiled away, pushing full-throttle on my career in HR.

Fast forward a few years, a global pandemic, and a personal creative renaissance and I would start to find my art medium. I would try painting, mixed media, collage art, calligraphy, drawing, stained glass, ceramics…and nothing stuck.

In the Fall of 2022, I went to a creative retreat that would ultimately change my life. This was Sacred Makers at Squam Lake in New Hampshire. I took a slow stitching class with Emma Freeman and a sashiko embroidery class with Rachel Barclay that opened my eyes. I was already starting a journey into the fiber arts, and started to do tapestry weaving, and after that retreat everything came together. I felt a natural connection to the thread and the needle and the fabric and when I got home, I just kept stitching.

Along the way, I found some vintage bargello needlepoint books and started to play with those patterns that resonate so deeply to my childhood. I signed up for Hello Bargello so I can learn how to make finished products and design my own.

Quite quickly, I learned that the patterns could be modified quite easily, and as I was learning how to work with data for my day job, I looked at my old bargello books and something clicked…a bigger idea.

More to come!