Category Archives: Portraits

Lisa Lackey: Always A Maker

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TSGNY: How do you describe your technique?

Lisa Lackey: I refer to my work as textile paintings. Fabric and thread replace the medium of paint on a canvas.

"The Conversation 5/6," 20" x 16", fabric, thread and acetate on canvas, 2014

TSGNY: Is this a recent development in your way of working?

LL: It’s been a gradual evolution. From my earliest memories, I’ve always been a maker.  I am always making something. Starting in my high school years, I began learning how to work in practically every medium, as I explored to find where my passion lay. That exploration and learning of processes made me a versatile art teacher — my profession for the last 18 years. But it wasn’t until I returned a few years ago, full circle, to my childhood love for sewing that my work found its genre.

"In the Shadows 5," 30" x 24", fabric and thread on canvas, 2015

TSGNY: Does working in thread enable you to do things you were not able to do in other media, like painting?

LL: I’ve never been a painter. I tried it along the way and was never enamored with it.  What I’ve always loved to do is sew and piece things together. There was a time when I made all my own clothes, and even had a business designing and manufacturing a line of women’s clothing. About three years ago I kind of stumbled onto collaging fabric and using hand and machine stitching to develop the details of the image.  When that happened it was like a light bulb went off.  All my artistic “parts” finally coalesced into an art form that spoke to me.

“The Conversation 4,” 20” x 16”, fabric, thread and acetate on canvas, 2014

LL: I bring to my current work everything I’ve learned from working in other media. Taken directly from photographs, my images are about the culmination of everything compositional: depth of plane, color, pattern, texture, and positive/negative spaces while witnessing, capturing, and recording unadulterated and universal moments in time.

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“Sister’s Foot,” 14” x 11”, fabric and thread on canvas, 2015

TSGNY : Does working in thread pose challenges you didn’t face when working in other media ?

LL: The biggest challenge in my work is size: both small and large scale. If the image is too small, the fabric pieces disintegrate under the pick of the needle.  And if the work is too large, it no longer fits under my sewing machine because of the stiffness the canvas creates.

“Selfie 103115,” 16” x 12”, fabric and thread on canvas, 2015

LL: Stretching the work for hand-sewing was another challenge I had to overcome.  The thickness of my work prevents it from being put into an embroidery hoop or wrapped around a quilt frame.  To solve this dilemma, I ended up developing my own stretching frame, inspired by frames used to stretch drying animal skins.  I lash my canvases to a wooden stretcher frame using a series of buttons and drilled holes. This gives me the tension I need to do the hand embroidery without the work becoming crumpled and distorted.

"Skin Frame Detail," 18" x 18", embroidery thread on canvas, 2015

LL: I like the stiffness of canvas, the white of the gesso and the texture.  It helps me keep the work flat and undistorted even after much sewing. I love the graphic quality of a flat solid plane of color and abhor when bubbling occurs on any large area of fabric. Although I fuse the fabric down, I machine-sew each of the fabric edges down for extra stability and because I like the way the outline looks.   When a piece is too big, I run the risk of it delaminating after being curled and re-curled to fit under the sewing machine’s foot. I am currently working on a piece that will finish at 36” square, a size I have never attempted before and am not sure how I will accomplish.  It will definitely stretch my process to a new level and probably add a few more gray hairs to my head!

“Sisters: The Other Feet,” 11” x 14” fabric and thread on canvas, 2015

TSGNY: Who inspires you?

LL: I love the work of Alex Katz, Chuck Close and Georgia O’Keefe. Among current artists, the sewn portraits and recent paintings of the verso images by Cayce Zavaglia are amazing.  When I saw one of her portraits in person for the first time, I was struck by how small it was. Its scale creates an intimate almost private experience with the viewer.  Then she turned them around and showed us the backs, or “verso” as she calls them.  Her latest work is a return to her painting roots, where she is painting those verso images on enormous canvases, thread by stunning thread.

My most recent influence is an artist I stumbled onto by chance: Lori Larusso. Her paintings have a wonderfully simplified, bold graphic quality that I love. At first glance, they actually tricked me into thinking they were fabric, and not acrylic paint at all. In some of the pieces, like those in the series “It’s not my Birthday,” it almost feels like you could lift each color and peel it away as if it were tactile.

TSGNY: Thank you, Lisa. You can see more of Lisa’s work on her website and in her book, The Composition of Family.

Hyunju Kim: NUBIGi–Time Resides In It

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TSGNY: What is your fiber technique and what are your primary materials?

Hyunju Kim: I use a sewing machine. My main material is thread. I also use cotton, fabrics, uniforms, and stockings. For the past three or four years I have been using recycled fabrics and materials for my art.

TSGNY: What are the origins of your current body of work?

HK:  Drawing was always a big part of my childhood. I spent my days drawing whenever my mother was working. As I began to realize how my mother’s absence affected my childhood, the drawing I was working on at the time caught my attention. Every dot on the piece of paper began to look like the stitches made by a sewing machine. Each dot and each stitch represented the flow of time. This marked the beginning of my work.

"NUBIGi 080" (2008), 90" x 72", sewing on cloth.

HK: My search for identity around the sewing machine established the ground for my creative work. Through my artwork, I am reviving thirty years, if not more, that my mother spent at her sewing machine. The sewing machine was her means of earning a living, but it was both a playground and resting place for me. This reflection on my mother’s sewing is the raw material for my work, and  the process of recording and expressing that carries a very special meaning. Sewing is a repetitive action that has therapeutic effects on me. As I sew on the sewing machine, I remember my mother and enter my own world.  There’s a certain irony, because sewing is how my mother earned her living, and I am making it into an art.

TSGNY: What kind of artwork were you doing before you started working primarily with a sewing machine?

HK: Before I used the sewing machine, I painted and did collages. When I started to use threads, I focused on the space between the thread and canvas. It was close to minimal.

"NUBIGi 080" (back)

TSGNY: Can you explain what you mean by focusing on the space between the thread and the canvas?

HK: I would cover a canvas with white cloth and grab some areas of the white cloth and twist them. Then I would wrap white threads around them, and all around the canvas. Because I wrapped the white thread around those areas, there would be some space between the thread and the canvas. When in contact with light, the thread would cast shadows on the canvas, creating more lines.

"NUBIGi 083" (2008), 102 "☓76 ", sewing on birodo (similar to velvet).

TSGNY: How and why did your work evolve from these minimal pieces?
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HK: When I was just using threads, I did not make any images on the canvas. I chose modern, simple colors like white or black. When I researched other artists who use threads and sewing machines in their work, most of their work was simple. So I thought I should create something to differentiate my art style from theirs. I started to draw faces that represented human emotions. It was more fun to do.

"Nubigi 083" (back)

TSGNY: Does drawing with the sewing machine pose any particular challenges?

HK: Because the process is very mechanical, it is very difficult to make my work look natural. I want to make my work look like a painting, so I try to look at many pictures to make it as life-like as possible. I also do a lot of sketches with different materials: crayons, paint, or colored pencils. When I draw something, I try to imagine each stroke or line as a thread. So the colored pencil is like the needle with the thread.  When I begin new artwork, I choose the colors and compose the image on the canvas. I like to make sketches by hand, imagining how the threads would be sewn on the canvas. Sometimes, when I draw sketches by hand, I learn new ways to draw and interpret the lines. Drawing by hand allows free movement compared to a sewing machine. It helps me develop different styles and techniques.

"NUBIGi 085" (2009), 16 "☓19 ", sewing on birodo (similar to velvet).

TSGNY: Did working with the sewing machine change your artistic intent?

HK: My intent has not changed. The main focus of my art is not the drawing itself. My main focus is time. All of the titles of my work include the term “Nubigi” and a number. The numbers just state the order of my work. Nubigi means sewing in Korean. Each thread is a symbol of time. If a thread changes in color over time, it goes to show that time still resides in it.

"NUBIGi 091" (2014), 27" x 27", sewing on cloth.

TSGNY: Finally, are there any artists who inspire you who you feel we should know about?

HK: There are two artists whom I particularly admire. The first is Francis Bacon, the Irish-born British figurative painter known for his bold, raw imagery of human emotions. His work always gives me ideas about how I should develop my techniques. The second is Kim Sooja, who was born in South Korea. Her work includes videos and installations. She is known for using traditional Korean scarves in her performances.

"NUBIGi 093," (2014), 11.75” x 11.75”, sewing on cloth.

TSGNY: Thank you, Hyunju. You can see more of Hyunju’s work here.

Linda Friedman Schmidt: Transformation Through Clothing

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TSGNY: What role does fiber play your artwork?

Linda Friedman Schmidt:  I am a self-taught artist, and discarded clothing is my paint. I start with discarded clothes of all kinds, everything from swimsuits and lingerie to socks, sweaters, pants, dresses, shirts, coats in all types of fabrications. I use natural and synthetic materials, solids and patterns, knits and wovens, although I have stopped using wool because it presents extra conservation problems. Each finished work contains many pounds of discarded clothing.

I cut these castoffs into strips by hand. The cutting is an important part of my process and pleasure: the breaking down of the old. It also provides a needed respite from the visual concentration required for hooking in a painterly fashion.

Studio with work in progress.

TSGNY: If the clothing is your “paint,” do you always use the material in its original colors?

LFS: Yes. Nothing is dyed.

TSGNY:  Once you have the strips prepared, what happens?

LFS: Before I start a new piece, I create a “mood board” the way a fashion designer does, with inspirational photo clippings and swatches. As I work, I alternate hooking and cutting, deciding which color I want next as I go. I hook the strips onto cotton warp cloth with crochet hooks or rug-hooking hooks, which are like crochet hooks with a more substantial wooden handle. My hook is now a unique shape. It has conformed to my technique and become crooked from my handwork. I hope it never breaks. My hooking technique is not the same as that of traditional rug hookers because it is self-taught and remains the same today as when I began. I work on a large custom-made frame with rollers on the top and bottom, which means I’m unable to see all of my large works in progress at once.

"Ridicule," 2012, 22" x 21", discarded clothing.

LFS: My slow method of creating a portrait is to break the human face into individual bits of information. Working on one section at a time enables me to give undivided, painstaking attention to every detail.

"Tear," 2012, 20" x 14", discarded clothing, placemat, acrylic.

TSGNY: You mentioned that you are self-taught. How did you arrive at this technique?

LFS: In 1998, I was at the local library, waiting for my daughters to choose their books. I was browsing the shelves and saw Rag Rug Inspirations.  I had never seen a hooked rug, nor ever heard of rug hooking. I was generally unfamiliar with folk art.  And I was not at all interested in making rugs. But the transformation of the rags grabbed my attention. I was looking for a way to continue my life’s work of transformation through clothing and realized that this was another way to do it.  When I got home I experimented with a crochet hook and a piece of burlap in my lap and taught myself how to hook. I felt an immediate affinity for the technique, and a strong impulse to hook every day, although I never had an interest in making rugs.  My interest was — and remains — transforming clothing.

"Exposure" (self-portrait), 2011, 51" x 44", discarded clothing.

TSGNY:  What kind of artwork were you doing before this?

LFS: I did not start making artwork until I was 49 years old. For many years I was an artist “in the closet.” I’d known I was an artist since early childhood, dreamed of being an artist when I grew up, but my family only valued my academic achievement. I begged to go to one of the NYC specialized art high schools but was not allowed to apply, nor could I attend an art college.

"Push," 2010, 20" x 33", discarded clothing.

LFS: As a pre-adolescent I became interested in fashion illustration and began experimenting with the idea of transformation though clothing. Fashion illustration led to an interest in fashion design. I began deconstructing and reconstructing old clothing into trendy new styles for myself. In my late teens I crocheted art-to-wear sweaters and accessories using geometric shapes that I transformed into fashionable styles. Julie Schafler (of Julie’s Artisans Gallery) discovered me wearing one of them, before she had the Madison Avenue shop. I also sold some of them at the original Henri Bendel store, where I started working as a salesgirl in 1971. At 21 I sold  ideas for creative transformations to Woman’s Day, which wrote: “Seeing possibilities for an entirely new life for everyday objects is a gift.”

TSGNY: No wonder you say that transformation through clothing has been your lifelong theme.

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"My Own Two Feet," 2013, 46" x 36"; discarded clothing.

LFS: In 1973 I appeared solo on the cover of Women’s Wear Daily, snapped on the street as a chic, super-stylish New Yorker – but unbeknownst to them, I was actually wearing my own thrift-shop transformations. That same year, at 23, I took my $10,000 life savings and opened a tiny women’s retail specialty store just a few blocks from Bendels. I called it LONIA (my birth name, which had been changed on our arrival in the USA). At the beginning I did not have enough capital to stock the store and created much of the merchandise myself. I also developed a passion for visual merchandising, an art form that’s also about transformation and embellishment. The challenge was making any and all merchandise gorgeous and desirable. I was regularly written up in national and international publications about visual marketing and was even awarded a patent for visual merchandising display forms I designed. After closing the store in 1987 to become a mom, I occasionally collaborated with my husband, an architect, as color consultant on his jobs. In 1994, I won the Benjamin Moore Color Award, presented by the American Institute of Architects for best use of color in an interior.

"The Scream Within," 2007, 27" x 30", discarded clothing.

TSGNY: Once you started working in this technique, did you find that it posed any particular challenges?

LFS: One challenge is that I cannot produce quantity. Galleries are looking for artists who produce large amounts of art. My process is labor intensive to the extreme. One of my artworks can take as long as six months. This means I have less work to choose from when submitting for exhibitions that require art to have been created within the past two years.

But for me the pleasure is in the process. There is joy, peace and love in the creation. This is my spiritual journey, immersed in every detail, experiencing the pleasure of the now, the hands working, moving in a steady rhythm, the rhythm of life. When I finish a piece I feel sad. I may have fewer pieces to choose from for exhibition entries, may not have a gallery representing me, but my work has been extensively exhibited in top-quality exhibitions and curators are beginning to know my art and request specific pieces which they invite me to exhibit.

"The Bad with the Good," 2009, 41" x 43", discarded clothing.

LFS: Will new technology become another challenge? Photographers and artists are already using technology that facilitates the printing of any photo onto a textile and the weaving of any image into a tapestry. Will this devalue the work of textile artists? A gallery in New York City is representing a photographer who gets his photographic images woven into tapestries he orders online. We are a fast-food nation and now there is instant textile art. What is the message?  Does this devalue handwork?

TSGNY: Although you break down your images into tiny units that might be analogous to pixels, you are clearly committed to creating those images through handwork. Do you think your process enables you to do things you wouldn’t be able to do in another medium?

LFS: Yes, because clothing is our second skin, an extension of the self, it is an autobiographical medium that evokes memories and deep feelings. Discarded clothing can represent devalued, dehumanized, and discarded humanity. It is laden with the symbolism of forgotten past lives.  Clothing can serve as relics of victims. My process enables me to rescue and give new life to this discarded humanity. It allows me to transform a painful past.

"Fear of Moving Forward," 2011, 49" x 38", discarded clothing.

LFS: This medium also enables me to connect with the countless others, long gone, whose garments live on in my work. It represents the profoundest level of intimacy, enabling me to touch strangers and interweave the energy of many with my own.

As a teenager I learned that clothing could be used to gain visibility. It is still helping me gain visibility as an artist.  We’re all aware of the stigma attached to textile art in general, which makes it more difficult to be taken seriously by curators of contemporary fine art, and harder to get into exhibitions other than textile exhibitions. I have overcome this  because my work uses textiles to carry a powerful message of transformation and healing. I am telling my own story, but also retelling the stories of our common humanity. I depict the emotional universe. I expand the genre of portraiture into larger social, cultural, and political issues:  race, gender, immigration, human rights, war, and power.  In addition, my artwork is about recycling, a rebuke of materialism, a concern for the environment. I am not afraid to make viewers feel awkward, uncomfortable, to raise issues that are disturbing.

"When Every Day Is Halloween," 2008, 27" x 32", discarded clothing.

LFS: I needed freedom from clothes that were binding, and now I use clothing to refashion my life, transform sad into glad, old into new, ordinary into extraordinary.

TSGNY: Finally, are there artists who inspire you whose work you would like us to know?

LFS: Artists I admire include Chuck Close, Alice Neel, Marlene Dumas, and Christian Boltanski.

"Sustenance from Strangers" (self-portrait), 2010, 36" x 33", discarded clothing, home textiles border.

TSGNY: Thank you, Linda. You can see more of Linda’s work on her website. She is also exhibiting at CONTEXTILE 2014.