Mending the Veil

Mending the Veil
Darning stitch on knotted net. Linen and cotton thread with natural and unnatural pigments, 2022.

The last photograph of my father is a selfie I took of the two of us. It was taken just before I left for the airport, a tradition I adopted on one of the many visits I had made over the years. I would return eleven days later to say goodbye for the last time, but he would be unable to answer me. The photograph shows a distorted version of my father, so weak and exhausted that he strains to smile. It is the last visual of record of him, but does not come close to conveying his being, or his personality, nor is it how I picture him in my mind’s eye.

For this triptych, I pixelated the selfie, and divided it into three separate compositions. His ashes were divided into thirds among us, and I felt that the image should be similarly dispersed. I made knotted nets of linen, and filled individual pixels by mending them with a single strand of embroidery thread. Some of the thread is conventionally dyed, some is naturally dyed with tea, indigo or oak galls. Some is unnaturally dyed with the nail polish I wore to his funeral, the house paint from the home I live in that he never got to visit.
Like dust, the pixels drift and rearrange, and by mending the image, he is visible again.

“Mending the Veil” (1 of 3)
Darning stitch on knotted net. Linen and cotton thread with natural and unnatural pigments, 2020.

“Mending the Veil” (2 of 3)
Darning stitch on knotted net. Linen and cotton thread with natural and unnatural pigments, 2021.

“Mending the Veil” (3 of 3)
Darning stitch on knotted net. Linen and cotton thread with natural and unnatural pigments, 2022.