In 2020, some months into the lockdown, I began meeting with my with butohBuddies over Zoom. I quickly made contour drawings them with my non-dominant hand during the meetings. I made 4 drawings and I gave two away so far. I held on to the last two drawings, decided to stitch them with dark green thread that I had at the time. I used fabric from work that was once used to contain insects and potted plants for some experiment. However, one of the coworkers took them home to wash them and put them in the dryer which melted parts of the fabric and created holes, rendering it unusable for future experiments, so they were destined for the landfill, but if you know me, you know I lunged for them before they could land in the dumpster (confession: I’ve also lunged for things after they landed in the dumpster). I took them home and now they get to live another life.
I turned two drawings into stitches by the end of 2020. I thought about stitching in leaves as border but couldn’t get myself together to actually execute it. I kept bringing in leaves and nothing happened for months and months and months and finally the leaves were too brittle. I gave up. The stitched drawings sat in my room for many months.
I met with my butohBuddies a few times this summer and fall and filmed some of our sessions together. I took screenshots from the videos and traced them over the stitched drawings I made two years ago. I used white thread (for machine stitching) on the fabric because I didn’t want it to be too obvious against the original stitched drawing. Here are the results of Nina and Kiyono.
I’m 90% done. I still want to put some sort of border around so they can hang it, but I’m S L O W. When have I ever been 100% done?
