Kelly Geist Assignment #3

I attended Erin Endicott's artist lecture about her work called "The Healing Sutras". Erin makes embroideries, and she talked about her work from past to present and showed pieces from when she started and pieces that she is currently working on. She also talked a lot about her process and how drawing and painting, which was really what she was interested in to begin with and what her early works actually were, influences her work. Erin's most recent work focuses on pain and healing. Specifically, she talked about how she was interested in "wounds" or behaviors that are inherited and a young age or that we are born with. She uses a lot of child clothing, such as her son's christening gown, or items of personal significance and stitches what looks like blood or stains on them from a distance. However, when you get up close to them there have very intricate and well planned designs on them. These are supposed to represent wounds. I found her work to be interesting because I've never really seen anybody stitch "wounds" into clothing or even think about embroidering clothing that way. I really liked her idea of being born with wounds or inheriting them before we are even old enough to realize but instead of representing them as they are as mental or emotional wounds she shows them as physical wounds. In a lot of ways there is no difference between a mental and physical wound, so I liked that she used them as one in the same. Also, a lot of the work that I like to create deals with the same type of subject matter so that was probably what caught my interest the most. I also liked that she wasn't afraid to use her sons baby clothing, her wedding dress or other pieces that are sentimental to incorporate them into her work. Instead of keeping them neatly tucked away somewhere she used them as a healing tool for herself. Overall, I really liked her style and the subject matter that she was depicting. It made for interesting pieces.