Deadly Beauty 2020

 As a girl growing up in the 1960s, I was taught embroidery and other skills befitting a future homemaker and mother. I learned to do “fancywork” from my mother and my grandmother, and I loved it. Later, in the 1980s, I left my assigned gender expectations behind and I went as far as I could go in the opposite direction, rejecting the traditional role I was assigned in childhood. I learned to weld, and since then I’ve embraced my metalworking skills to make steel sculpture, furniture, and jewelry. Recently I’ve returned to my childhood when my art was bound to work that could be done inside the house. I’m grateful that because of the pandemic, I’ve again gotten lost in the meditative calmness and grounding I find in needlework. 

In researching images for this show, I was moved by the beauty and message of a 1913 Suffragette poster by B.M. Boye, which was my inspiration for “Votes for Women.”