My recent work in mixed media/digital collage includes handcrafting and computer thread “painting” (embroidery). I produce small and large--yet intimate in feeling--combined printed, sewn, and thread painted pieces. Using this approach, along with line drawings of traditional garb (ballgown, shoe, prayer shawl/tallit, jeans, etc.), I reflect on the worth of oft undervalued “women’s work,” (i.e. domestic products by women of all cultures), once blocked from attending the art academies. In these works, woven apparel or adornment (earring) seemingly emerges from highly manipulated photographs and/or traditional monoprints of well-traveled (mostly urban) environments in differing degrees of decay. It is both paradoxical, and fitting, to “paint” articles of clothing and use the very material – thread – of today’s manufacturers.

The universal themes referenced in these mixed media pieces include: using our powers toward good works, appreciation and respect for our environment, preservation of life and our ecological surroundings, and bettering our inner selves, as opposed to buying/consuming for our outer selves. Many of the collages point to the withering of natural resources, and the overly materialistic, consumption-crazed culture around us, as I superimpose images of mass-produced wearables onto environmental scenes. I hope the imagery and words acquire a special, maybe mystical, forward-minded virtual reality here. These images connect the spiritual world of nature, humanity, disorder, and atmospheric effects with the new power of the systematic realm of the computing machinery. What better way than to use the power of the machine that spawns global communities as a medium for expressing moral ideals that benefit us globally?

*Tradigital: A term used to describe work that blends the strengths of the digital art-making process with that of traditional techniques or technologies.