contemporary embroidered life

Today Modish pointed out the delights of artist and illustrator Kate O'Connor's embroidered artwork. {Modish cites dear ada, one fo my favorite art blogs, but somehow, I missed this.} I could go on about the green-ness of using found vintage materials, about the DIY movement and the resurgence of interest in old-fashioned crafts, about reclaiming 'women's work' and textiles, about high and low culture and needlework as art, about beauty in imperfections, about handwriting and typography... but more than anything, this is clearly a woman with an insightful, au courrant, kick-ass sense of humour.




Her work is more varied than what I have shown, so check out her site for more and works in other media.

A Genius is the one most like himself.

Thelonius Monk’s advice to saxophonist Steve Lacy (1960) via swissmiss.

The irony of Monk, of all people, writing, "Stop playing {all that bullshit /those wierd [sic] notes, play the melody!" really amuses me. Mixed in with such simple basic advice as tapping the rhythm are some gems. Back in the olden days, when I played saxophone in a jazz band, my neighbour used to tap out some other rhythm, utterly disconnected to the rhythm at hand (or, at foot, as the case may be). Used to fascinate and irritate me in equal measures. I can only think the cliched but true "takes one to know one" at Monk's insight "a genius is the one most like himself". And the final line made me laugh.