The Portrait Embroiedry Workshop

 

In the last post I mentioned the portrait embroidery workshop I conducted in The Fiberfusing Atalier in, Netherlands this past July. Here are some photos and a bit more information about the workshop.

This workshop was based on a self-portrait embroideryseries I have created during the last two years.

I had already conducted similar workshops several times before in Tel Aviv, and it is always fascinating to follow the process people go through during this particular workshop.

The process begins with transferring a photo (participants are asked in advanced to bring a portrait of themselves or of a loved one) onto fabric and then tracing it using embroidery techniques. The slow process of the embroidery, as well as transferring the photo onto fabric and translating the photographic image into lines, entails a very slow process of observation, which stimulates much awareness to detail: the facial features, the way they look, the meaning and the way that each small line or dot affects the overall appearance, the expression and the way it affects the appearance of  beauty and age.

I assume the most interesting part of this workshop is this process of translating a photographed image into such a different medium, and dealing for a long while with its nuances of lines, dots, and stitches, and the diverse meanings they hold for each participant.

 

  

I chose several images from this workshop. With embroidery works, I am always fascinated by how interesting the reverse side is as well – sometimes even more so than the front.

 

These two last works were created by a grandmother and her 21-year-old granddaughter. They both used a photo of the grandmother's mother, and it is interesting to see how differently each of them chose to stitch her.

 The reverse side of the two works.