The Yarn We Spin

It's amazing the yarn we spin. About the past. About beauty. About time and age. About the present and about each other.

Crewel Intentions is a collection of textured, saturated portraits inspired by editorials and advertisements from Playboy magazines from the 1970s.

I have been collecting Playboys for nearly two decades, ever since I stumbled on one in an antique warehouse at 19 in Brisbane. I wanted to explore the imagery in the magazines I had been collecting for nearly two decades, but instead of imposing a predetermined meaning on the collection, I allowed myself to explore what emerged in the process of making. It feels easy when embroidery is a calm, meditative indulgence in the present. While flipping pages, reading and reimagining these images, I found myself in a time warp. Old images on textured paper, photos taken on film - adverts of outdated products, images of people, who might now be frequenting knitting circles, all reimagined, recoloured and reshaped in thread.

I felt the passing of time, the shifts of beauty standards. I ruminated on my own ageing. Through all this, the most incredible part is that no matter how different things look, we are the same.