My paternal grandmother was a master seamstress, artist, and self-taught pianist. When I was five, she taught me how to sew.
I learned about the magic, mystery and power of thread, bobbins, and beautiful old machines that hummed and made amazing patterns in colored lines that seemed to flow and float across the fabric surface like music coming from an open window.
In her studio there was a wall with hundreds of bobbins wound with a rainbow of colors carefully arranged in a perfect sequence of hues, values, and spectral intensity. She would give me a square of black felt to sew on, let me choose a basket full of steel bobbins loaded with colorful cotton thread and place me in front of a massive antique Singer sewing machine.
The bobbins would spin, whirl, and lay out the most delicate lines in a gracefully meandering rhythm. It was a powerful, transformative and liberating experience that would help define the course of my life as an artist. I learned a way to create a visual world of infinite patterns, movement, and space that was self-sustainable and my own.
During the Coved 19 pandemic I found myself leaning into these memories for support.
The recollections of my grandmother Willie Gore-Smith in her light filled sewing studio surrounded by a courtyard filled with mimosa trees inspired these works.
This work is my homage to her remarkable inner strength and the gentle way she nudged and supported me. She guided me into the world of art that she knew and expressed with her bobbins and magic machines.
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