I fell down an interesting embroidery-related rabbit hole while reading the book Fabric of a Nation (recommended in my last post). It reminded me how interconnected a practice can become over time. While most of the works included in the book are quilts, one is an embroidered bedcover made by Marguerite Zorach as a commission in 1925-28. I still can’t get over how contemporary her stitched patterns and marks appear.

If you aren’t familiar with her, Marguerite Zorach (1887-1968) was a painter and textile artist who was married to the sculptor/painter/printmaker William Zorach. I’ve been aware of her for what seems like forever because she was a Maine artist, but I’m embarrassed to say I never took the time to learn about her work. Rather, I was much more tuned-in to her artist/illustrator daughter, Dahlov Ipcar, who created vividly colorful images of animals within lushly stylized flora. They were, as you might imagine, very appealing to a young person.

However, seeing Zorach’s embroidered bedcover and finding other examples of her work on the web all these years later, I’m only now realizing just how much I’ve missed by not learning about her sooner. In hindsight, I’m devastated to see that I missed the Farnsworth Museum’s 2017-18 exhibit “Marguerite Zorach — An Art-Filled Life”. C’est la vie.

Trained as a painter at the turn of the 20th century, like many of us, Zorach turned to the needle in order to maintain and balance a creative practice alongside motherhood. She was prolific, with her resulting textile pieces similar to her fauvist paintings in both color and imagery. These modernist textiles were very well-received, earning her wide recognition and a crucial means toward supporting their family financially. Yet, while her work helped to break down barriers between art and craft, critics still considered embroidery “lesser”, so in time her work fell out of favor in an early instance of the seemingly immortal Art vs Craft divide rearing its head.

I’ve been playing around with embroidery since I was 10-ish or so, continuing through high school and only moving away from it in college when formal art studies took center stage. After our first child was born though, I gravitated to making art quilts as a more child-friendly medium than the pastels and paint I had been working with pre-pregnancy. From the very beginning, embroidery was an important enhancement to each quilted piece.

Unfortunately, at that time I was ignorant of the richly stitched legacy that artists like Zorach had laid out more than a half century earlier. There were, however, plenty of contemporary artists to learn from and to follow. Barbara Lee Smith’s seminal book Celebrating the Stitch, Contemporary Embroidery of North America was a benchmark for me as I forged a path forward with stitch.

All these years later I consider embroidery a versatile mainstay of my work. Given time, it’s no surprise that any artist’s practice circles back over itself, re-incorporating much of what was picked up along the way. My current pieces include embroidery on cloth, as well as stitching paired with painting on paper. You can see examples of both in two shows opening this month:

Up & Down, In & Out: Embroidery and its Kin
Studio Place Arts
March 13 – April 20, 2024
Artist Social: Saturday, March 16  4:30-6pm

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Solar Eclipse
The Highland Center for the Arts
March 23 – April 21, 2024
Opening Reception: Saturday, March 23  5:30-7pm

One last note: when we visited the MFA, Boston in January, I was beyond thrilled to come across a piece by Renie Breskin Adams, whose densely embroidered work initially caught my eye in Smith’s book. It was the first time I’d seen her art in the flesh.

Being able to study this piece up close was like finally meeting an old friend/mentor in person. And now that I know about Zorach’s history and her pieces in the MFA’s collection, I can look forward to seeking them out too, to learn and to pay homage on a future visit.

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If you can get beyond the mud on your road, there’s no better way to brighten up a drizzly, gray March day than with a healthy dose of color and the warm tactile beauty of this fiber art exhibition. There are only 10 days left for “Trichromancy”, which closes on March 16th.
Chandler Center for the Arts Gallery, Randolph, VT