After our trip to Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts a couple of weekends ago, I can’t help but wish the museum wasn’t three hours south of here. I would love to go more regularly. I always get museum envy after visiting any city — it’s such a luxury to see so many masterworks under one roof.
As the piece begins, I stitch the image with silk thread
Adding definition and texture with stitch variation
Image complete, ready for dye
So I was interested to read on Hyperallergic last weekend that The Art Institute of Chicago has revamped their website and now provides free and unrestricted access to over 44,000 masterpieces from their digital archives. While it may not be quite as good as seeing the work in person, the sophistication of high-resolution images is a darn good substitute, furnishing those of us who live far afield with better access than ever before.
Folded and marked, ready for resist stitching
Resist stitching complete, threads drawn tightly for best results
Reading that article reminded me that several years ago The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York put 400,000 high-resolution images online. Looking further, I discovered The Yale University Art Gallery also offers free downloads of work within their collection, as does The National Gallery of Art and The British Museum. I’m sure many more institutions are jumping onboard as well.
Still wet from the dye process
Dyes and eyedroppers
Dyeing complete, ready to remove resist stitching
I know it’s not quite the same as sitting before the real thing, but it’s pretty remarkable that we can get so close to art virtually, don’t you think? What a gift it is that modern technology allows us to study masterpieces in collections far from home, in incredible detail, from the comfort of our studios.
Unpicking the stitches is a delicate process, especially when doing my best to keep my ripper away from the embroidered image.
The dyed piece unfolded. I may be in a bit of a pickle with this one as the dye took more readily to the embroidered area than it has in the two previous pieces I’ve made with this process. You can only barely see that there is an image hidden in the center. ©2018 Elizabeth Fram
By angling the piece in the light, you can at least see there is something there. Now the detailed work of bringing it out begins. This is going to be a challenge.
While looking into all of the above, I discovered Open Culture, which seems to be a gold mine of free cultural and educational media. You will want to add it to your bookmarks.