Several seemingly unrelated items have been swirling in my head since last time, their connections becoming more apparent as I write.

On a recent episode of the “A Brush With…” podcast, Ben Luke talks with Billie Zangewa, an artist who hand stitches imagery that straddles the line between the highly personal and decidedly universal. Having grown up in Botswana, now living and working in Johannesburg, South Africa, Zangewa’s goal is to challenge existing representations of Black women. Yet her brightly colored, intricate compositions of silk and stitching also explore overlooked aspects of many women’s lives (she refers to this as “daily feminism”). Her perspective is very relatable, especially to those who try to juggle a creative career with family and home life.

What I would have given to hear this podcast 20 years ago when I was always on the lookout for mentors who were able to balance motherhood with their art, without the benefit of hired help. So many young women are very successfully doing just that today; I am learning from them in hindsight. Yet even if that particular subject isn’t your concern, I think you too will enjoy listening to Zangewa ebulliently discuss her practice, her influences and her art.

Along the same lines of life and art overlapping, the other gem that grabbed me was a quote from the book Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell. If you haven’t read this novel (again, with a woman at its central axis point), put it on your list! I’ll let you discover its premise, but suffice to say it’s beautifully conceived and written, touching on a subject appropriate to our current time.

Maple Pecan Pie ©2021 Elizabeth Fram, Watercolor and Pencil on paper, 5 x 5 inches I couldn’t stop thinking about sketching while I cooked and baked for our Thanksgiving meal. My counters became an ever-evolving still life.

My greater point, though, is that a skilled writer can conjure images that are so relatable that even mundane impressions become solidly locked into place in new and elevated ways, leaving one marveling with a deeper understanding. For me, often immersed in the art of embroidery, the following analogy is brilliantly applicable to a variety of things that belie their surface appearance.

It is so tenuous, so fragile, the life of the playhouses. He often thinks that, more than anything, it is like the embroidery on his father’s gloves: only the beautiful shows, only the smallest part, while underneath is a cross-hatching of labour and skill and frustration and sweat.”

It makes one think of the proverbial duck who seems to glide across the pond, yet whose feet are furiously paddling beneath the surface, not unlike a busy mother. And, I can’t help but think of the work of Cayce Zavaglia, master embroiderer, who lately has been exhibiting the backs of her larger-than-life, super realistic embroidered portraits (versos) and her paintings of the same. Her intent is to highlight the “divergence between our presented and private selves”.

Sandra 5 (verso) ©Cayce Zavaglia,

With all the above said, this past Tuesday as I looked at the calendar I realized that this very week marks Eye of the Needle’s 7th anniversary of uninterrupted weekly, and for the past two years, bi-weekly posts. In fact, this is #315. I have always seen this blog as source of connection – both with the greater art world and with you.

But what I have come to most appreciate and to value about this practice (and I do think of it as a practice) is it has allowed me to be more deeply engaged in my day-to-day, paying closer attention to underlying connections which most often arise unexpectedly. In many respects, this is a space to pull those loose threads together. Through the act of writing I become more cognizant of what I think and feel about the many, often humdrum things which somehow end up influencing my ideas, and in turn manifest themselves in what I make. And that is really the meat of this particular post. I hope that by sharing my relationship with those moments, you too have had cause to reflect on new perspectives – or to reconsider old ones – in a fresh light.

In this technology-driven and divided world, exactly how much relevance can the art of fabric and thread expect to maintain?

Last week Antrese Wood of the Savvy Painter podcast talked with realist portrait artist Cayce Zavaglia, whose medium just happens to be embroidery. The interview didn’t disappoint. The nuggets of information and wisdom shared surrounding Zavaglia’s process, the content of her work, the way she balances her workday with raising four children, and how she migrated from paint to working with thread, encapsulate the particulars I am eager to learn about any artist. So much of what she has to say directly resonates, and boy, what I would have given to have heard this discussion 20 years ago!

As she often does, Wood asked Zavaglia if she could share a time when she experienced a particular challenge in her practice and what she learned from that occurrence. Zavaglia responded that she now actively seeks failures and mistakes in her work, noting that failure is often a closer link to creativity than success because, while riding on one’s success can be great, it can also be a creativity suppressor, making it easier to pigeonhole and compartmentalize the work by inhibiting further exploration and discoveries.

The pivotal moment Zavaglia related involved a work that contained a section she had reworked over and over in an effort to get the mouth just right. By continually removing threads she had compromised the integrity of the linen ground, resulting in a distorted image. The piece was exhibited but she was never happy with it, and afterward pulled it from circulation, keeping it in her studio for a couple of years, face to the wall.

During that time she became more and more engaged with the back of the piece — its knots and messy tangle of threads — finally arriving at the epiphany to reframe it in reverse. In doing so, the original distortion seemed to disappear as it was now shielded from direct light by the shadowbox of the frame. She displayed the piece on a pedestal so that both sides were visible, with the “back” side now considered the “right” side. It was the first work that sold from that show.

Zavaglia says that while the portrait was an obvious failure, with time and distance she was able to find the beauty in the mistake. That discovery completely changed the trajectory of her studio practice, such that now the backside of her stitched imagery is integral in both her embroidered pieces and her paintings.

The point I found most enlightening is that in searching for the relevance of her stitched family portraits in the grander scheme of the art world, Zavaglia realized that these back images represent a portrayal of the hidden side of ourselves that we all possess but don’t often expose. Referencing the emotional impact of Anthony Bourdain’s and Kate Spade’s suicides, she acknowledges the parts of us which are messy and tangled and human, and the importance of being aware that they exist despite outward appearances to the contrary.

In that light, to answer my original question, I can’t think of a more appropriate medium than fabric and thread to make such an impactful statement about the effects of contemporary life within our society today — politically, socially, and emotionally.

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And speaking of the relevance of embroidery: Did you read this article: “An Artist Unites North and South Korea, Stitch by Stitch”? Who says there isn’t power in the needle?

Elizabeth Fram

Eye of the Needle

Tag Archives: Cayce Zavaglia

Gathering Loose Threads Together

The Other Side

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