My work strives to take something intangible and make it tangible.

 

Every day leaves us with a series of impressions. Marks. Traces.

 

Uncovering the tracks and mining them for their stories through stitch and ink is how I examine and shine a light on relationships, social structures, and hierarchies.

 

Seams in clothing, lines of stitching, depressions in paper, spoken words, all leave marks behind. Tracing these marks tell stories and reveal maps… trails from which we can traverse a timeline of experience.

 

As an artist working in printmaking, mixed-media and textiles, I explore the language used to define women, forms in which feminine lineage manifest and how stories of women are told. Chine collé and collagraph pieces from my Dress Series utilize found items and images of girl’s clothing in printmaking with and without ink. This process reveals a map of different depth depressions evoking the familiar shape of the garment. Stitching and painting into these forms and lines allows me to mine the folds, seams and stitches where memory remains long after the wearer has outgrown or abandoned it.

 

In the chine collé prints, pages are chosen for words used to describe girls and women and which speak specifically to being female. The dress on the page acts as a request to stop – asking “consider this”!

​

Aprons and textile tapes are sewn into to create legacies in cloth – the recipes of comfort food that are passed down through the weaving of feminine lineage. The woven cloth a symbol of the intertwined lives.

​

We are clothed in dresses, aprons, swimsuits and other articles of clothing, witnessing our life from birth to death. There are stories there to mine. This work continues to evolve, exploring images through textile, paper and ink which evoke memory, examine layers of women’s stories, and strive to create a visual cloth as a form of feminine lineage.

​

​

Artist website: www.suebradford.com

Artist Instagram: @sue_bradford

Artist facebook: @suebradfordart