My first semester of graduate school ends on December 5th. Thus the countdown clock tells me I have but 32 days, 790 hours. Yikes.
Time's a-wastin', and I'm still not 100% sure what I'm doing for my final project. But I hear this journaling crap is supposed to be a good way to work out ideas, right? Meh, let's give it a shot...

One of the first assignments that we had for my design courses was to prepare a short, 10-minute presentation of work that we had done recently to introduce our classmates to the questions that we've been struggling with and where we were at in terms of skill-level. Well, I fessed up and showed this photo, among many others, with the disclaimer that I normally don't tell anyone about this secret hobby until I know them really, really well.

Once the dress was complete, the next phase was to throw a mini photoshoot and take some shots of my model (aka my classmate who graciously volunteered to the gig) wearing it. We ended up taking the majority of the shots inside the fabulous new AT&T Conference Center on the UT campus. Never in my life have I seen such beautiful hand-laid carpet, and it's EVERYWHERE!

After the dress project, I tooled around with some material studies in crocheting for awhile. Ever crocheted a coffee filter? I have. That and a piece of caution tape, ethernet cable, bubble wrap, sand, a belt, a measuring tape, toilet paper... the list goes on an on. I think I ended up crocheting around 50 items. Anyhoo, after that I returned to the medium that started this whole crazy quest into handicrafts - cross-stitch. I'll spare you the complicated details, but my next intention was to develop a technology that could reproduce photographic images into cross-stitch patterns while maintaining the same level of color definition and vibrancy as in the original.

This phase was inspired by my dream man, name unknown, but the guy who works at the Volant Embroidery Art Studio (the only one of its kind), In San Antonio. I've actually said probably less than 50 words to the guy, but any 20-something, latino, attractive, and seemingly heterosexual man who knows more about thread dyes than I do has got to be a one-in-a-million catch. At Volant, they recreate a wide variety of art pieces using this big honking machine that can create patterns that duplicate your original color within 7 shades. He explained to me that embroidery thread is made in every 15 shades on the color spectrum - that's the minimum difference required to be visible by the human eye. So to achieve a medium shade, they will sometimes combine one of the 15-shade colors on either side of the desired color to create the blending that matches the original color. Make sense? Didn't think so... That's why I'm sparing you the even more complicated stuff. It's just a bunch of graphs with numbers and RGB and CMYK and RYB values - nothing pretty. (The reason this photo's taken from outside is because when I returned to the museum on my most recent visit to San Antonio they were closed. And I was sad.) :(


So I got cranking on developing a pattern for an image that I found through Flickr, that of a brightly colored duck standing in the water. The test was to see if I could stitch something that would be able to differentiate between the original duck and the reflected duck so that it wouldn't seem like he was merely doubled on the page. Four hundred thread colors, 8 pixelated image variations, and countless attempts to code his colors, and all I was left with was a headache - and a big one at that. Did you realize that when you purchase 400 different colors of thread that you have to hand-code and hand-select each individual one at the craft store? Did you realize that you then have to take them up to the cash register where the clerk has to ring each one up individually? How about how you then have to go home and catalog each one and put them onto individual cards with their name and DMC registration number (as they correspond to the RGB color charts that others have hacked by purchasing DMC cards and doing a color match using a painter's tool)? Yeah, neither did I. My receipt is literally about 20 feet long. My advisor about had a heart attack when I plopped that one on his desk. Thinking about just framing it as is, saying it's "art", and calling it a day.


But enough about the duck (yes, it's making my head hurt just thinking about it again). Besides, what in the world was I going to do with a giant embroidered duck? Hang it in my house? I'd have to redo my decorating scheme just to incorporate this ginormous feathered friend. Besides...it's a duck! So my advisor wisely advised (he's an advisor, that's what he does) that I select a different image. At first, I said, "Ugh." thinking that this meant I had to start over from square one.

Instead, I did as a good student is supposed to, and I started my ardent search to re-select an image. I began by looking for an image that somehow represented color theory. Nada. I looked for something revolving around pixelization. Nope. I looked for something that showed dillution in color intensity. Not a thing. Well, I found stuff, but it didn't "grab" me. I like my projects to goose me and really get my engines revving.

And that's exactly what happened. Remember at the beginning of this elongated rant how I told you that I was embarrassed to do cross-stitch because everyone thinks that it's just a bunch of hulla-baloo about samplers and Native American eagle feathers and wolves howling at the moon? (I never understood that connection either. Aren't Native Americans supposed to be making pottery and dream catchers and weaving blankets? I have yet to see an Indian lady cross-stitching something out of a package she bought at Michael's Arts & Crafts.) Really, what's the difference between cross-stitch and any other medium that's used to reproduce an image - like painting or drawing? Nothing really. So why are we confined to these hokey images? The way I see it, there's absolutely no reason we should be.

Therefore, I present to you my selected image:


It's gruesome. It's horrific. And there's absolutely no reason why it can't be recreated in cross-stitch. Next, I purchased a Mac-based program called Stitches that can upload your photo and allows you to specify the number of colors to be used, the number of stitches per inch, etc., and then it spits out a pattern for you. This original photo has 277 colors in it, some just single specks. When I turned the color number down to 125, here's the pattern that was produced (note that this is less than half the size it would've been if we had stayed at true size):



Yeah, take a close look at that. That's the size of an extra-wide conference table. Remember that William Morris piece I showed you above that was only 2'x3.5'? That one took me two years to finish. So you better believe that the thought of me having to finish this one in the next five weeks is enough to start sweating bullets. (I gotta step up from this Dove deodorant crap...) Enter the wide world of cropping. Next mission was to find a way to crop this image in a way that still maintained the message intended for the photograph's audience. It needed to convey that there was a woman in anguish, desperately asking for handouts to support her two small children. This was the final choice:


Alright, I admit. I just didn't want to cross-stitch a young boy's penis. Just something about that that doesn't sit right, you know?

So this image is going to be stitched (and already has been started) onto burlap to reflect the textural quality of the clothing worn by the photograph subjects, as well as the harshness of their situation. While all you cool kids were out trick-or-treating or bobbing for apples in your sexy cop outfits, I was covered in these burlap threads, conjuring up the itchiness factor of the one summer I spent reorganizing boxes of insulation in my parents' warehouse. It's pleasant , lemme tell ya.

But I'm still freaking that I won't be able to get it all sewn. My next thought is to complete the arm/hand that I've already started and then figure out a way to transfer the rest of the image onto the burlap. I'd love to see it all displayed in a series of cropped images. The first might show a photograph of the cross-stitched arm sticking out with no context. I imagine it looking like a religious image of some sort. Next, we can show the rest of this image, the hand with the little boy. Now the viewer will realize what the woman is asking for money for. And, lastly, I'd like to reveal the entire image, displaying the horror in her face as well as the second unclothed child.

I hope that the color gradation that I have chosen does an adequate job of representing the photo-quality look I'm going for. I hope that the audience is challenged in their thinking of what cross-stitch is and how it can be used to communicate an image. And I also feel like this horrific photograph is something that needs to be seen. This sight is common in so much of the world, and yet so few of us ever actually see it if we're too hesitant to leave the country or to even pick up a copy of National Geographic. The photographer who took this shot probably congratulated himself on capturing an emotional moment on film. And that's exactly what the medium of photography is excellent for - capturing single moments. For this picture, I'm going to make it in a medium that shows it's worth taking the time to consider it for the long term. This lady and her sons will never know about our discussion here or whatever art piece is created from their terror, but we will know their story. And I can only hope that it stays ingrained in our minds for a long time to come.

[This is where I'm at right now. If you've got any feedback or ideas, please lemme know. I'm all ears!]