Sarah Pedlow
Green Kerchief On Slovak Kroj With Pleats, Poppy, and Coral Necklace, 2022
Cotton embroidery floss, pencil, pricked holes on 1970s postcard 8 x 5 inches
Front and back of postcard shown.
Sarah Pedlow
Curtain With Loops, 2021
Ink and cotton embroidery floss on cut and curled laser print (found image) 4.75 x 4.75 inches
An image of a contemporary blouse becomes a curtain with cut and stitched floral patterns tying together and peeling back the surface. I am interested in the relationship between dressing the body and window dressing, how we make a home in what we wear and the textiles we use in daily life, and how what we make and wear reveals who we are.
Sarah Pedlow
Orange Ukrainian Poppy with Dutch Print on Lace Curtain, 2020
Ink and cotton floss on cut and curled laser print. 10.5 x 7.8 inches
This image is part of a series I began during the COVID Lockdown, working with photos from my daily walks in my neighborhood in Amsterdam. I am deeply curious about the world, how the things people make reveal who they are, and the culture of textiles: what we wear on our bodies and use in our homes. I excavate and curate the past and the present by stitching and cutting photographs, curling back the paper to make the images three-dimensional. I use photos from my daily life as an American living in Amsterdam and my travels working with embroiderers in Eastern and Southern Europe. My work is a process of wayfinding, mapping, and place-making, noting a street giveaway now broken and left for trash, a contemporary, lace curtain fabric spotted again, or a dropped braid of hay as a synchronistic sign along the way. I also use images of 19th-century clothing, interlacing the contours of memory, cultural emblems, and the reality of living in a disposable visual culture. A ribbon is a line, is a seam, is a silhouette. A bow is an ‘X,’ is a cross-stitch, is a signature. A curtain is a blouse, is a veil, is a curtain.
