Monthly Meetings
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly – Women’s Storieswith Gina Ferrari
on 05 June 2018
Gina Ferrari gave a talk on her work entitled “The Good, The Bad and The Ugly – Women’s Stories”. For 18 years or so her work has always been about stories and the people, mainly women, in them. Blurring the fact and fiction of the personnel involved in these stories, she has created a series of bodices about well-known female characters. Using free machine embroidery, she has created a bodice for Anne Boleyn in red and golds, and one for Miss Haversham looking appropriately wedding dress like but ragged and old. Another knitted one for Marie Antoinette had the addition of a tall wig made of knitted cupcakes.
She also showed us the book made of pieces of lace that were sent to her by women and into each page of lace she incorporated, by machine stitching, the words of the story behind the pieces of lace.
A recent move has been into portraits solely using stitch, instead of “weird” things, such as the fabrics that dissolve. Mounted in embroidery frames are the faces of the famous, from film stars, such as Marilyn Monroe and Audrey Hepburn to musical stars such as Elvis and David Bowie. This set of work is all about stitch using the machine and the portraits are really life like.
MW