In 2015, with a Brooklyn Arts Council Community Arts Fund grant, I’m creating Native/Immigrant City, handheld fabric sculptures I embroider with stories of assimilation, acculturation, adaptation from natives, immigrants and transplants from other US states to Brooklyn. As part of this project, I lead embroidery circles where we share NYC memories, as in these images below.
Embroidered Storytelling at Brooklyn Workshop Gallery, Gowanus
Stitched selfies and narratives — students of all ages
“Writers of a Certain Age” at the Brooklyn Cottage
In fall 2015, Jenny Douglas of the Brooklyn Cottage, a Prospect Heights creative lab, and I co-curated an evening of readings by writers ages 60+. Invited performers and self-recruited performers shared their works in a supportive, cozy environment. The enthusiastic turnout, with guests of all ages, emphasized the need for more intergenerational cultural events and opportunities for seniors to lead creative activities.
In 2013, with support from a Community Arts Fund grant from the Brooklyn Arts Council, I spearheaded @EmbroideryPoems, using Twitter to follow other poets, and post my own 140 or fewer character verses. At an event open to the public, hosted by 61 Local in Brooklyn, poets recited and musicians played as an embroidery circle I trained captured select words in stitch. Below are some images from this Embroidered Poetry Slam.
Some resulting embroidered poems from the evening:
At a final, culminating event for @EmbroideryPoems, Weaving Hand in the Navy Yard, Brooklyn neighborhood hosted an exhibit of my woven and embroidered poems, and local (Monte Olenick and Montana Ray) and not so local (Octavio Gonzalez) poets read their works.
Leanne Prain, Canadian author focusing on craft(ivism) and the intersection of craft and social practice art profiled my @EmbroideryPoems project in her book, “Strange Material.”