My mother’s wedding dress, silk embroidery thread, photo transferred love letters.
I embroidered my father’s love letters onto my mother’s wedding dress. They met over Memorial Day Weekend in the summer of 1935 when Lew was the Social Director at Shandalee Camp in the Catskill Mountains. Ethel came for the weekend and met Lew as he was rehearsing for a Saturday night social. One year later, they were married and remained together until his passing in 1990.
Vintage photo album, hand embroidery, photo transfer on organza & linen, vintage buttons, stitching.
2010
This piece explores my family’s rags to riches story as told through the cars they owned. The album begins with a photo of my father’s family sitting in a fake car in a photo studio in The Bronx and ends with his 1977 Mercedes Benz in Beverly Hills, CA.
Upwardly Mobile
Vintage photo album, hand embroidery, photo transfer on organza & linen, vintage buttons, stitching.
Closed 7 x 10 x 3 Open 7 x 64
2010
c.1949
c. 1949
Size variable
Hand Embroidery, photo transfer from c. 1949 Brownie Handbook, wooden embroidery hoops
2016
c. 1949_detail
c. 1949_detail
Migrants
Migrants
Migrants
40 x 32
Hand embroidery, vintage jewish prayer shawl (Tallis), photo transfer
2020
My paternal grandparents, fleeing the pogroms, emigrated between 1884-1888 from Hummene, a small village in Austria-Hungary.
I hand embroidered, on a vintage Jewish prayer shawl (a Tallis) their journey across Poland and Germany to Rotterdam, where they boarded the ship Dania to NYC through Ellis Island. In 1955 my family settled in California. Migrants reads from right to left like a Hebrew prayer book.
The outlined photo is from my father’s Bar Mitzvah, c.1915, and the chicken soup recipe was handed down in my family from my great-grandmother.
Between the blue stripes on each end, I embroidered my family’s history with each of our Hebrew names.
We were the lucky ones.
Migrants_detail
Migrants_detail
Migrants_detail
Migrants_detail
Tapestry of Secrets (Ethel 1909-2001)
Tapestry of secrets (Ethel 1909-2001)
42 x 10
Hand embroidery on vintage silk slip, photo transfer, poem written by the artist.
I wrote this poem for my mother Ethel in 1998 while I was living with her. I chose to embroider it on a vintage slip because she had a collection of silk slips that she loved.
