Bonnie J. MacAllister

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

Embroidery and felting on recycled textiles

2020

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Artist Statement

My portraits on handmade felt are crafted through embroidery, created from that original figure drawing, transforming it into needlepoint, a quilt of pores, threaded with twenty or more colors, bounded and knotted with each physical perforation, a performative puncture onto the self-healing felt. 

After learning to spin and weave as part of my Fulbright Hays Program grant to Ethiopia, I became determined to continue my story through textiles. My studio is filled with vats of organic dyes and experiments including turmeric, quebracho rojo, indigo, and Himalayan rhubarb. I produce my own yarns and threads on a spinning wheel, and I create a palate from kitchen and garden items that can be used to produce color on fabric and other textiles. I embroider and felt portraits on these fabrics.  

The muscle memory of sewing is guided by recollections, stringing the grit and tooth of obstacles, the furrows of seams and seeming, of life stories fought out, patched out before paint would dry, better rather knit, pounded out in coarse intermingling of fibers, torn out and restitched, a forgiving medium where every loop can be redone and undone, tacked and basted anew. 

bonniemacallister.com  
Twitter/Instagram: @bonniemacart