PDF won’t be available until post-sales but here’s a link to the website for ordering and information:

http://www.embroiderersguild.com/index.php?page_no=120&page_menu=home

tho to be honest, I find their Facebook page easier to navigate:

https://www.facebook.com/Embroiderymagazine?fref=ts

Alicia Eler wrote this amazing essay about my work for the upcoming show at Packer Schopf Gallery.  It’s always so fascinating to see your work through someone else’s eyes.
Enjoy.

TMI (Too Much Information)

Packer Schopf Gallery

May 24 – July 6 2013

It is that moment at the school prom when the hot football player flicks off the camera before he gets wasted, and then falls between his high school sweetheart’s legs for the first time. The freshly pricked former virgin, sitting in her parents’ living room the next day completely hungover, reaches into her purse and uncovers a bag of Oreos labeled “EMERGENCY.” She wonders: How did those get there? Then she posts that question to Facebook. Semi-private moments that were once meant for a few select sets of eyes are now public and online for the person’s social network audience. From parents who happen across teenagers’ Facebook news feeds to real-life friends given access to this information to Internet trolls jonesing to bite off another reddit comment thread, these are the types of visual and auditory vulnerabilities that spread fast on the social web, giving those privy the opportunity to react, respond or simply ignore. But SRSLY, who doesn’t want to talk about what’s on their mind today?

Kathy Halper’s work mirrors adults’ ongoing fascination with youth culture, imbuing it with today’s hyper-social-networked edge. Media theorist Marshall McLuhan predicted the advent of the Internet, suggesting the future of living in a global village that acts and reacts to the pulse of culture. He notes that it is not adults, but rather youth that instinctively and intuitively understand this type of “electronic drama.” This is where Halper’s work begins. Creating embroidered drawings from photographs of adolescents that she finds on social networking sites, Halper’s work questions the disappearing space between public and private online, the subversive use of fabric, needle and thread, and the role that technology plays in shaping adolescence. Her work questions the ways we look and observe, and how adults connect with the youth of today. These questions stem from both her personal experience as a parent, a love of the homemade craft, and an awkward relationship with the Internet.

The artist’s decision to use embroidery rather than painting is paramount. For her, reclaiming this supposed “women’s work” is a radical act, resulting in an empowering, labor-intensive product made by a woman who is also a mother. Much in line with women who have embroidered before her—from the Victorian era onward until today—Halper’s decision to use embroidery rather than painting or photography, provides commentary on the role of women in society today. Her work continues the dialogue around the ever-evolving construction of femininity that “contains its own curious power,” as Rozsika Parker writes in The Subversive Stitch: Embroidery and the Making of the Feminine. “The stereotype of embroidery as a vain and frivolous occupation, like the stereotype of the silent, seductive needlewoman, controls and undermines the power and pleasure women have found in embroidery, representing it to us negatively.” Additionally, embroidery is a practice specifically attached to mothers and daughters—and as Halper’s daughter appears on occasion in her social media-inspired embroideries, the familial connection is strengthened or, as it were, sewn into the fabric as skin tones, memory, relationships, and perhaps drops of blood that bleed onto the fabric as she furiously sews.

Painting these images would be too easy, though certainly time-consuming. By choosing embroidery rather than paint these of-the-moment images that pop up on social networks, Halper calls into question time as we experience it online. Halper’s work flips the fast-paced social space, where decisions are made faster than synapses spark, to a meditative, labor-heavy cloth canvas where subversion and empowerment are threaded. In an age of instant gratification—shopping online, liking and sharing quickly and without further thought—Halper’s embroideries stand in deft opposition to the mediums from which they appropriate their images, daring to stand the test of time.

Halper’s fascination with youth culture isn’t a result of the social networked era. Joseph Sterling photographed adolescents in the 1950s and 1960s, shortly after the term was first invented. Indeed, before this post-World War II era, the idea of “teenager” as we know it did not exist. Halper’s work literally needles in our culture’s continued fixation on and commodification of teens and tweens. And much in line with Marshall McLuhan’s thesis that, thanks to social networks we are all becoming one global village again, Halper’s discovery of teenagers in their online sanctuaries happened serendipitously after her kids’ friends friended her—and presumably other mothers—on Facebook, the world’s largest social network. Photographs of what happened last weekend, or even just last night, are readily available and even freely offered by teenagers for their entire network to see.

This type of easy access is both a parent’s dream come true and their worst nightmare simultaneously. But is it really teenagers’ fault? Blame it on the medium. Authenticity lies in Halper’s embroideries of fleeting adolescent moments, and are readily depicted through a medium that mother knows best.

—Alicia Eler

Chicago, Illinois

April 2013

TMI (Too Much Information) is my next solo show at Packer Schopf Gallery beginning May 24 and continuing through July 6.

I will be continuing my exploration of youth culture as seen through social media.
There will be new never seen drawings based on found photos and text, as well as new colored portraits incorporating acronym messages.
As a painter I am really enjoying the process of creating these full colored portraits. The familiar quest to “capture” someone’s expression and
the challenge of layering colors to create a painterly like depth is a pleasant return to form. At the same time I’m fascinated by the evolution
of a new form of language created through emoticon, shortened spellings and acronyms. I want to continue exploring this with the emoticon
patterns I designed. I like the idea of taking these forms which were designed for use in digital technology, which have no “non-virual” existence
and expressing them through the very slow, deliberate, textural hand of embroidery.

The question is, how much can I get done in time for May?

My biggest challenge is a 48″ x 36″ “Family Portrait” hand embroidered on velvet.

A month out from the show and it’s starting to look like I can make it!

Here’s the center piece and here’s the beginnings of the gold filigree embroidery based on my emoticon patterns that will decorate the black velvet background.

Here’s a 3 minute trailer for a mini documentary being made by Joe Gallo about me and my work leading up to my show at Packer Schopf Gallery in May 2013. Joe Gallo is an incredibly talented art director/photographer/filmmaker who I had the pleasure to work with many years ago when I was a copywriter in advertising.

“Don’t Stop Believing”

is part of group exhibit at
George Billis Gallery in LA.

Opening January 12.

January 12 – February 16

Was so honored to be included in Kate Kretz’s wonderful paper and powerpoint presentation delivered at The National Textile Society Symposium in Washington, D.C. on September 20, 2012. Motherhood as subject matter in contemporary textile-based art.

The presentation discusses how women have been discouraged from incorporating their status as mothers into their work. that historically, it has been treated as an either/or issue. You can’t be a mother and serious artist. Choose one. Kate shows examples of textile artists who have defied that thinking and I can’t tell you how excited I was to be included in any discussion that features Louise Bourgeois, as well as many of my favorite contemporary fiber artists.

My work is shown at the back end of the 25 minute talk as Kate is talking about motherhood as children get older and more independent.

Listening to Kate, I was able to take pride in my contribution to this movement of women artists proudly exploring the profound experience of mothering. And that I’m exploring the part of motherhood where things don’t always go so smoothly. Where life gets messy and children thrill their parents and scare them, sometimes in the same breath.Thanks Kate, for helping me understand my own work better.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84BK4VFRE5w

January 18 – February 21 2013 

My work was featured in the Packer Schopf Gallery Booth.

For more images from PSG booth and other interesting art go to:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/82808742@N07/

2012
49″ x 49″
Hand Embroidery, Machine Stitching on Linen

Vote Code: 52803 

I am so happy to have “Epic Party” as part of “Role/Play” at Kendall College of Art & Designduring Artprize 2012.

In addition to exhibiting some of the most exciting art in Grand Rapids during this year’s event, Kendall College will also be home to a speaker series featuring some very prominent art figures.Jerry Saltz, Theaster Gates, John Waters, among others will be speaking.

I’ll be listing links here to many of the Artprize and Kendall College information pages:

http://www.kcad.edu/blog/kathy-halper-friend-me/ - I’m featured on the Kendall College Blog this week

Artprize home page

My page on Artprize.org 

Kendall College of Art & Design - College Homepage

http://www.kcad.edu/blog/artprize-roleplay/ - good description of Artprize and Kendall’s role in it

http://www.artprize.org/news/notes-on-the-2012-artprize-speaker-series/ - Artprize’s Speaker Series

http://kcadgalleries.tumblr.com/ - List of artists participating in Role/Play at Kendall College

8/16/12

Just installed the show yesterday. Here’s a sneak peak at the space. This is the first exhibition in the newly renovated building, formally a courthouse and art museum before being given to Kendall College. I felt terrible banging up their beautiful virgin walls but got the job done, nonetheless.