This work centers on careful stewardship of textiles, both heirloom quality and everyday clothing items. Keeping in mind notions of cultural heritage, matrilineal inheritance, muscle memory, and shared links between language and cloth, the works mine words and phrases from the care tags of bras. The words are isolated from their full context and rendered in colorful weaving and lace to allow them to float between literal handling instructions and small poems about care and intimacy in the time of a pandemic. It also incorporates Armenian needlelace (Janyak). Janyak is made simply with a needle and thread. Because it is made with lightweight and commonly found materials, it is a craft that has survived the forced displacement of many generations of Armenians.
Emma has created a traditional lace design and added the words "gentle cycle". It has been placed on a velvet pillow.
Artist: Emma Welty
Size: 12"x 11"
Age: Contemporary
Place of Origin: Woodbury, Connecticut
Type of Textile: Lace
Material: cotton thread, wool thread, velvet, fabric scraps
EW012
