Pondering Embroidery

Embroidery can't just be confined to fabric. Rather, it shouldn't be. It should break away from not just fabric, but this 2D plane and take on new forms.

This is a photograph/ embroidery experiment by Richard Burbridge & Robbie Spencer (I think.... I found it and saved it a while ago). I love the way the threads are used to not only enhance but perhaps pull the message of the photograph in a different direction. I also love the parabolas he creates with these fading threads... it isn't like geometry in a school book but has a dimension to it. You know which threads are above and which are below. There is a texture to it and I find that interesting. Also the way the parabolas are drawn from the eye, to the ear, through the neck and to the edge of the dress.... makes me wonder about his work process... How would he have started? Would he have taken tracing papers over the photograph and drawn lines through to see what could emerge? or would he have imagined the embroidery first and then choreographed the photo? Or would he have just looked at the photo, pondered a bit, and KNOWN what to do?

Here's another one by the same duo. This one also has the geometry, but adds this hairy quality to it... Thread can be unpredictable and takes the shape of what is given to it. But when given no shape, it follows the wind. Here the thread wants to do that but is pinned down at some points by this geometrical thread, pulled taught, doing what it is supposed to do. I've never imagined using thread this way, so this picture actually jolted me a bit.And you know what... THIS is the thread's true expression. Not the geometry. Not the pretty little flowers and daisies we embroider on handkys and kids' clothes. THIS is thread.

Here's a project where X (I don't know who this person is...) draws architecture with thread. I'm not sure what this project does. I don't think the thread adds anything to the 'drawing'. There is perhaps the minor texture... but for most part, it seems like a different medium to do the same thing. The thread is imitating the pen here (the pen only used with a straight edge, mind you... for the thread can make only straight lines in this case). It isn't being itself. It isn't doing the amazing things it can do.... So I think this experiment doesn't do anything. For me, at least. 

Here's an experiment that I did with kiddie clay. I made large versions of some common stitches... 3D. The orange is chain stitch, pink is buttonhole, red is herringbone, blue/green is stem and the yellow is a close-knit version of buttonhole. What emerges are these 3D forms that can be made into objects... for example I can totally see how the (pink) buttonhole one can become a bowl eventually (I ran out of clay). 

But again, this isn't 'embroidery' in the traditional sense anymore. It is something else. In my mind it seems to follow these evolutionary steps... from stitch (always needing 2D cloth support) to a weave (like macrame or a braid that doesn't require 2D support) to this (blowup of the thread into a material with strength and rigidity).

So again, my question is, what else can embroidery do? Is it confined to this 2D plane? Is it confined to these forms we give it? Can it not be something structural, rather than something decorative? Can it evolve? 

I'm currently exploring these ideas through my ceramics... so... stay tuned.