‘To Remember This Brings Painful Joy’ explores the connection between loving and losing. A memory is scientific thing, but it has the power to make us keel over, render us helpless, paralyze us with its recollections. My textile work is a continuous study and artistic representation of the memories in our brains. The embroidery stitches are snippets of moments stored within the folds of the textiles – folds of our brains. The bright colors and chaotic strokes are just like many of my memories of good and bad times: sharp and vivid, but sometimes unreliable. Verso embroidery is used to also represent the other aspect of memories: fuddled and fuzzy, an attack of texture.

 

Artist’s message: “The main source of inspiration for my work centers around grief, and I feel that this exhibition hits home with the concept of memories. This body of work is based on a personal memory I had in my mid twenties with the person I thought I would marry. It was a simple, mundane, everyday moment but it remains to be one of the strongest piece of memory that keeps coming back. I was musing over a few titles for this body of work and because I always relate my work with a particular poem I love it was fitting that I found one in a nick of time. The title came from a line of a poem/prayer from YeHuda HaLevi, a Jewish poet.”

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‘Tis a fearful thing
to love what death can touch.

A fearful thing
to love, to hope, to dream, to be –

to be,
And oh, to lose.

A thing for fools, this,

And a holy thing,

a holy thing
to love.

For your life has lived in me,
your laugh once lifted me,
your word was gift to me.

To remember this brings painful joy.

‘Tis a human thing, love,
a holy thing, to love
what death has touched.”