From ScratchThe phrase, “like grandma used to make” gets nearly 300,000 results in a Google search. This nostalgia for the culinary past—before packaged foods and high-fructose corn syrup—fails to take into consideration just how much time it takes to make three full meals a day from scratch. Indeed, what it takes is a person in every household who’s full-time job it is to cook for the family. We called these people “women”.
Like the production of food, a variety of handicrafts were a mundane requirement of the female gender. Today, as we come to realize that something has been lost in the mechanization of everything around us, there is a return to the idea that making something from its most basic parts has great value. Sewing, embroidery, and knitting have enjoyed resurgences, sometimes even within the realm of fine art. Home cooking is once again gaining popularity. Within this atmosphere, the temptation to romanticize the past is strong. Yet, the availability of packaged foods is what allows us the time to pursue careers, to develop new technologies, to create.
The food on our tables may not be as tasty as it once was. It may not even be as wholesome. But it is important to take a step back and recognize the trade that has been made, and that what we have gained is not to be undervalued.
My work is about choice. As a woman in the twenty-first century, I can choose to spend my day baking a loaf of bread, or to grab a package off a grocery store shelf after a long day at work. I can choose to spend my evenings embroidering. I can choose to combine these things and call it art.
[Image description: A slideshow of four images, each are embroidered pieces on various breakfast foods, the first is a 10 x 19 grid of a square breakfast cereal which looks like little wheat netting squares, they have been embroidered in a cross stitch style with the words “Breakfast - The most important meal of the day.” The rest of the piece is decorated with cross stitched flowers in green and red. The second image is of two pieces of bread one on top of the other which has been embroidered with extremely realistic mould in white and green. The third image is of two pieces of toast, one propped up on the other to angle it toward the camera, the one in the foreground is embroidered with a very detailed image of an egg cooked sunny side up. The third image is of a piece of white bread on a napkin with a white plastic knife lying on top of it. Underneath the blade of the plastic butter knife is a yellow embroidery of what I assume to be butter, it looks a bit like the knife is spreading the embroidered butter on the bread. End image description.]
I really like it when folks embroider on things that are not fabric, also really love super realistic embroidery. Also love toast.
