Stacia Yeapanis
April 23, 2009
“Buffy Summers #2″ (2007). 15 x 22 inches. Cross-stitched Embroidery
“Everybody Hurts” , a series of cross-stitched embroideries based on television screencaptures, explores mediated emotion. TV shows are contemporary myths, which help us to define who we are, individually and in relation to our culture. Cross-stitching a single moment from a time-based medium is an act of contemplation and commemoration. Each stitch is a badge of endurance: of the glacial process of art-making and of the pain shown in each image.
Detail.
Hi Stacia,
I like your description about these works. I’m wondering, too, if your embroideries are a comment on the merchandizing that springs up around fandom (Buffy in particular). The notion that fans creatively respond to and participate in the myth-making process is often exploited by large media corporations seeking to turn a profit.
Cheers,
Susan
Thanks for your comment, Susan. Certainly what you say is true, and I won’t deny that such a critique could be read in my work at times. But that’s not my intention. An underlying drive in my work is to explore and reveal how viewers and users of cultural products (like TV shows) make meaning, often by becoming cultural producers themselves. It’s no secret that large media corporations have a bottom line and will exploit fans to make money. It is what it is. There was a lot of video in the 1970s which explored the ways that TV is manipulative. But that seems like a simplistic way of viewing how culture really works, how meaning is made. Plus I never liked how that critique implied TV viewers have no agency.
The medium of embroidery keeps this work away from referring too directly to merchandising, because of the time element. These are hand-made cross-stitches, which take months to complete. The largest piece to date took a year. The painstaking recreation of a single moment is meant to signal devotion and love. I would never look at a mass-produced Buffy doll and ask why it was made. But I would wonder that about a hand-made Buffy doll. Also, it would be strange for merchandising to focus on the most painful moments in a text instead of the glory or the romance. This is the way that I reveal my meaning as a fan. I could have stitched any moment (more than 23,328,000 seconds of film) from the entire series, but I choose what is meaningful to me.
That makes sense. Thanks for clarifying!
I’m curious, too, if there’s a new series or TV character that you find resonates for you in the way that Xena, Buffy and Charmed have?!
s.
Oh, there are so many! I’m constantly watching TV while I make these embroideries, but mostly on DVD. The only current shows I’m keeping up with are Lost and Dollhouse (from the creator of Buffy, Joss Whedon, and in danger of being canceled). Battlestar Galactica recently aired its last episode. That is a show everyone should see. But it’s not only Sci-Fi that I enjoy. Other favorites are Six Feet Under, The Sopranos, and Big Love. Characters from some of these other shows are also in embroidery series. “Tony Soprano” is in-progress and I’d like to do John Locke from Lost. He struggles with his faith so much. All the best characters do.
Dear Stacia,
I’m thinking of your crossstitch projects in terms of endurance. Do you ever stitch as a public performance? I remember the exquisite resonance of Janine Antoni’s REM weaving performance.
Nora Hertig, who has also posted here, takes the stitch in a textual direction. You two might have an interesting conversation.
Another question: In the selection of your subjects, are you specifically looking for moments of pain? The painterly quality of the work is interesting to me. The register of pain is infinitely more discrete than that in the raw Mise en Scene performance of Noelle Mason shown in another LY posting.
Look forward to reading your thoughts and seeing more of your work.
Best,
Cathy
Yes, these are definitely about endurance. The process was chosen to represent these images of emotional pain, because both require endurance. In my project statement, I say,
“Each stitch is a badge of endurance: of the glacial process of art-making and of the pain shown in the image. Each stitch challenges me to keep going and distracts me from the overwhelming whole… The process of embroidery, like that of existing, goes on and on. Every moment, or stitch, requires a choice, a commitment to the difficult task of continuing on.”
I don’t stitch as a public performance, because it is utterly boring to watch. I have only seen still documentation of Janine Antoni’s weaving performance, but I imagine she did something more riveting than I could do. I’m glad you made the connection though. My work is meant to build on the work of feminist endurance performers like Antoni but to bring back from the performative to the personal, everyday experience of endurance again. I want the work to refer to something private that we all do to seek solace.
As to your other question, when the project started, I was specifically looking for moments of pain and anguish, moments that touched me, because of my own pain. But recently I have been considering memorializing joy. I’m not sure if I’m ready for that yet, because there are still so many pain pieces I want to make. When you said that the register of pain is “discrete,” that made me remember that not everyone has seen these shows or knows these characters. I, of course, already know this, but it’s easy to forget. But this brings up another intention of my project: to remind ourselves that context changes how we read. The fans, who know the source material intimately, and the art viewers, who can only respond to the image presented to them, probably read this work differently. But as an artist and a fan, I’m courting all those meanings. This is the first time this has occurred to me in this way, but maybe my work is about the space where distance and attachment meet, where intellect and emotion meet. I’ll have to think about that some more, before I can clarify it.