A Closer Look: The Mechanical Bride

Just weeks before the official opening reception of Sasha Baskin and Christina Humphrey’s two-person exhibition, The Mechanical Bride, the IS Projects gallery had to sadly close its doors to the public due to COVID-19. Given that you are a friend of the gallery and/or the exhibiting artist, I am reaching out to share an exclusive closer look at some of the pieces in the show in an effort to further the reach of this exceptional work.

As a gallery attached to a printmaking and book arts studio, we aim to feature artists with an expert sense of craft and process, regardless of the medium. This exhibition is no exception, featuring predominantly smaller-scale weaving and embroidery works by Baskin and Humphreys. With their concise and muted color palettes, each work is deceptively simple at a distance, only revealing their expansive intricacies and landscapes of thread through close and careful examination. So, let’s take a closer look, shall we? 

Perhaps the ‘centerpiece’ of the exhibition is Sasha Baskin’s weaving, ‘Study for Jenny’s Departure’. By far the largest piece in the show, this work measures 40” x 30” and is comprised of digital and hand woven cotton and silk with rosette overshot patterning and natural dye. The woman depicted, along with many of Baskin’s motifs, are sourced from the reality television series, The Bachelor. According to Baskin, this work is part of a larger series addressing modern mythology through the lens of popular culture.

Dramatic (Study for Jenny’s Departure), 2018
Digital and hand woven cotton and silk,
rosette overshot patterning, natural dye
Screenshot from The Bachelor (Season 22)
40” x 30”

Study for jenny’s departure, detail

“This image depicts a woman rejected by the lead during the second episode of the season. I was struck by her strength and resiliency in the face of reality television rejection and explored her character as a modern mythological figure. Throughout this series, I repeat a rose and woven rosette motif. This work glitches and distorts a modified rosette pattern structure (a traditional overshot weaving pattern typically used in American Coverlets). A rose is the symbol of validation on ‘The Bachelor’ and receiving a rose allows a contestant to continue on to the next week. Through the repetition and distortion of this rose-based weaving pattern, I offer the woman getting rejected a form of agency and control over her own roses.”

Roses are echoed throughout the exhibition in framed, delicate lace pieces which punctuate the gallery.

Portrait of Lacy in Black and White
(After Da Vinci’s “Portrait of a Woman”), 2018
Digital and hand woven cotton and silk screenshot from
“Bachelor in Paradise” (Season 4)
14” x 11”

“Portrait of Lacy in Gold (After Da Vinci’s “Portrait of a Woman”), 2018
Digital and hand woven cotton and silk screenshot from
“Bachelor in Paradise” (Season 4)
14” x 11”

Pictured above are two partner pieces, ‘Portrait of Lacy in Black and White’ and ‘Portrait of Lacy in Gold’. “This image takes the same screenshot of a supporting character in the reality tv universe and creates an optical illusion through thread and pattern. Just as a digital image relies on perspective and the interaction of pixels and light, [Portrait of Lacy in Gold] appears and disappears based on the viewer's perspective. Due to the interaction of reflective silk and twill woven patterning, the image can become invisible and, from certain angles, the cloth appears blank.”

The Mechanical Bride takes shape through the conversation between Baskin and Humphreys’ bodies of work. The artists find common ground in examining the consumption of mass media and its manifestations in our lives. Through a series of six embroideries, Humphreys addresses her own anxieties while searching for answers on the internet and seeking truth in an abundance of conflicting information, untruths and unknowns. She conveys this by focusing on distorting recognizable symbols with heavily applied patterns in abstract compositions.

Samples, 2019
embroidery on stretched cloth, wood frame
8.5” x 8.5”

“The embroidery designs I'm working on right now are sort of disease-like - contrasting patterns overlapping each other and distorting somewhat recognizable text and symbols. They have a certain anxiousness to them that relates to how I feel reading the news online and engaging with social media.”

Over the course of eight months leading up to an exhibition, Christina Humphreys created the works on view, each of them progressively more influenced by events that were unfolding at the time. “The ‘diseased’ patterns I was making started to take on a literal meaning beyond the metaphorical, as the world began to understand and respond to the spread of Coronavirus.”

BWR2, 2020
embroidery on stretched cloth, wood frame
11”x10”

BWR2, detail

The piece, BWR2, is the largest and final piece of the series combining recognizable patterns, distorted shapes and icons, and the color red as an indicator of contamination.

Cover-up, 2019
embroidery on stretched cloth, wood frame
8.25” x 8”

“The title is a reference to the riddle ‘What’s black and white and read all over?’ and the shortening to BWR takes inspiration from the nomenclature of viruses. I can’t help but see the influence of pandemic on this series, especially in these final works.”

Humphreys’ process begins with constructing a digital image, examining her marks as pixels before stitches. Then the designs are painstakingly executed through an analog process of hand-embroidery.

“I’ve increasingly felt a strong connection to the (painfully) slow process of stitching in contrast with the speed of creating patterns digitally. In some instances, I am able to make changes to the pattern after I have already started embroidering, but that is rarely the case, and I often have to commit to a design referencing events that look completely different or are already long forgotten [by the project’s completion]. In the end, the works feel extremely personal, but I sometimes don’t even recognize them.”

As this exhibition comes to a close over the next couple weeks, we will leave the gallery lights on 24 hours so that our local audience can safely access the exhibition through our large storefront windows. We also invite you to view the works more closely through our Virtual Gallery Tour.

For pricing and additional information on the works in the show, please visit our Gallery Shop and feel free to reach out to me via email with any inquiries at sammi@isprojectsfl.com

Sincerely,
Sammi McLean
Gallery Coordinator
Printmaking & Book Arts Studio
17 NW 5th St Fort Lauderdale, FL 33301
www.isprojectsfl.com