In my early work made from the daily newspaper I searched for the poetry and drama of the banal. In Piecework I worked with the decorative patterns and paper protecting coded biographies sent through in the daily mail, and with Stage Sets I set some scenes with the filing-cabinets that are the resting places of those fragmentary histories.

Here in SongForms I am listening for resonances in the documents themselves. The project is made up of thirty-eight embroideries, reproductions of the graphic layouts found on common financial, legal and business materials. These sources range from bank statements and Form 1099’s to investor profile questionnaires, class action court filings and health insurance forms. The lines, boxes and grids extracted from such documents might indicate a way to identify yourself, or contain your itemized tax deduction or detail the long-term gains and losses of your retirement savings.

The fabrics that receive these embroidered “drawings” have been cut down from secondhand heirloom bed linen and some include unique elements — monograms, darned repairs, or the joined center-seams that distinguish large handwoven textiles produced on small looms.

The simple appearance of these embroidered drawings belies an extremely labor intensive manufacture. SongForms were sewn entirely by hand using a counted thread technique and a variety of stitches and types of thread to simulate the line weights and colored areas printed on the original source documents. Some pieces took as many as 100 hours to complete.

 All Image Credits: Sollins Studio

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