Lino + Embroidery

Angeliki with her feather stitched shirt and french knot button

Nicole with her satin stitched bow

Lino + Embroidery

Jo with her straight stitch geometry

Leila with her cross stitch shirt

Lino + Embroidery

Soo-jin with her laid stitch with couching shirt collar

Valéria with her satin stitched stripes and hair ties

Lino + Embroidery

Rosa with her french knot bar, satin stitched hair tie and fern stitched shirt

Sasha with her whipped running stitch shirt and satin stitch earrings

Lino + Embroidery

Catharine with her backstitched earring and couched lace collar

Corinne with a chain stitched coat, straight stitched scarf and back stitched head wrap

Rosa

the last of the lino ladies- Rosa

Corinne

One of my lino print Ladies. From the back, Corinne.

Nicole

One of the ladies in my lino block series. Nicole

Soo-jin/Sara

Another of the lino prints in my Ladies series. This is Soo-Jin/Sara.

Valéria

Another lino print in my Ladies series. This is Valéria.

Leila

Another lino print from my Ladies series. This is Leila.

Even as hair obscures, it enhances, and exposes.

Jo

Another lino print from my Ladies series. This is Jo.

But people can seem familiar even if unknowable. There's a certain universality to women's hair...

Catharine

One of my linoprint ladies. Catharine


And also, other people are always, to a certain extent, unknowable. Everyone is aloof even when vulnerable.

Sasha

One of my linoprint Ladies. Sasha

The thing is, though women can't see the backs of their own heads, there's still so much personality there.

Angeliki

I'm working on a series of ladies carved in lino. They are inspired by women I know. This is Angeliki.

I ended up drawn to this type of subject for this series because of the combination of strength and vulnerability the back of women's heads communicate to me as well as my own femininity. As women, we're encouraged to have long hair which requires constant maintenance to remain "presentable". But it's a constant struggle to remain presentable; our hair obeys the call of gravity or its natural texture and tends to fall out of its intended form-hairs straggling free before the eventual collapse of whatever hairstyle we did that day. We're (usually) constantly adjusting-redoing our ponytails, our braids throughout the day. Added to that, we rarely get to actually see what our hairstyles look like-yeah, you can angle mirrors or crane your neck or take photos-but for the most part, we are maintaining something that we rely on our skill and practice to trust it looks "ok". There's a strength in this confidence, this ability to go about our normal day unapologetically feminine and human but inevitably a vulnerability as well.