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| All diamonds overlayed together. |
Forming a heart with your hands tends to produce a diamond-like shape in the middle stages of the action, just after intention and before completion. Embroidery is likewise an art focused on the process, and certain parallels like the transience and unimportance of the process can be applied to this gesture. Embroidery and various other types of media, like cinema, music, usually don't disclose their working process to the consumer. Not that they’re not important, sometimes it’s to protect specific techniques or ideas from competitors. When designing motifs for my graduate piece, I wanted to effectively distil themes relating to relationships, familial, romantic, and friendly into shapes that could permeate my piece without being noticed outright. Hidden in the final result, whilst being evident in the process. To achieve this, I mimicked the way smear frames capture the feeling of motion in between key frames in movies with multiple distorted brush strokes, glitched effects. I formatted the composition and layout of colours to the structure of a pop song/ballad, the bridge, chorus. Encompassing every design aspect of my motifs with these considerations allowed them to blend in and accentuate the main print and embroidery of the garment. My approach of combining multiple similar things to achieve a similar effect in another medium is arguably haphazard and considerably chaotic. In Opilamonnia, this wasn’t a problem as the whole project centred around the power of contradictions and visually translated into quite chaotic forms and designs. For future projects that wish to incorporate intermedial practices, a careful cherry picking of schematics to suit a stricter colour scheme would also work if the work commits to an uncritical conversation with itself. All four main diamond motifs pictured here experiment with my feelings towards individuals in my life. Put on show with the use of my diary entries as text, yet obscured by my hesitance to share them. Plagued with a self-conscious design directive. Drawings of sketches of objects associated with people I care about and people I don’t. Drawings and photos of hands, always reaching outwards for something yet drowning in a sea of unreal and unrealistically vibrant colours. Nothing in service of celebrating or condemning a certain person, but simply portraying their existence/idea. The colours work to mystify their colloquial meanings and it is never clear if they’re warm because they’re loving or cold and damning, but certainly always full of intent and passion and purpose. A burning insecurity and desire to be seen and seen through strikes through these designs.
Maintaining them as subliminal features of Cuh Opilamonnia Rs was a priority at first, but when I came to consider them for a revision and remix a couple of months later, I utilised the idea of “process” again. As these insecurities and relationships shifted in my personal life, I felt like manifesting one of these diamonds as a main and forward piece/accessory. When redesigning this piece, I changed the colours to match ones picked out by certain people and myself. New people. Some colours remained, but the reality was that I couldn’t exactly match the shades of my digital designs with the thread I had, and it wasn’t something I wanted to spend time attempting, as this was an opportunity to change something about the design. Therefore, I made the most of embroidery as a medium and incorporated textures that introduced new meanings to the piece through technique and thread type. I utilised red silk thread that represented a finality in understanding, as seen also in the third panel of my overcoat. A conversation that has come to an end and a colour that you can bask in, representing blood, passion and desire. Then to make the most of the accessory, I stitched it with buttonhole stitch down the middle on both sides, to then cut it in half. To wear it on both ears, to give to someone else. I think what I love about embroidery is the grounding in reality it provides through the process and possibilities of display. Particularly transformation and potential for change, and every aspect of my work bleeds with change. Along with the third panel, the first panel (interchangeable) features colours inspired by ammonia, urine and skin discolouration. Colours that are present in the human body alongside blood represent decay. All subtly interwoven and strengthened in meaning and importance through each revision and remix.
