‘City of Secondhand’
On display From September 14th - November 2nd 2024
“I am distracted by many things. Words, nature, emotions, a great face! All of these have inspired me at one time or another. They are wrapped up in the magical realism that is genetic when you are born on the coast in Colombia, along with the pop culture seduction of my new country. But mostly, it’s the joy of using any materials I have on hand and rising to the challenge of making something tangible from what pops into my head.
My motto of “work with what you have” is not just about encouraging sustainability and reducing waste but also about incorporating the memories and prior lives of the objects I use. It also comes from not always having the money to invest in my practice. My embroidery work encompasses all of those ideas. The fabric, ephemera, 2 dimensional pieces and even the hoops were once used for a different purpose and are now connected by new threads.
For this show I wanted to go back to my roots in illustration but using needle and threads instead of pencils and watercolor. I also learned a new word- Hyperphantasia, the condition of having extremely vivid mental imagery. It is the opposite condition of aphantasia, where mental visual imagery is not present. The experience of hyperphantasia is more common than aphantasia and has been described as being as vivid as real seeing, AKA the condition of being an artist.”
-Patty Eljaiek
All photos by Chris Basford | @basfordphoto
