QUARANTINED TIGERS

During San Francisco’s shelter in place I developed a body of work titled “Quarantined Tigers” where I needlepointed the observations of my 4 year old twins onto vintage tiger imagery. I’ve found humor, sadness, new perspectives, and resilience in their thoughts during this strange moment in time.

As an artist I call my medium conceptual needlework. I use the historic needlework techniques to extend the message within my work, because every style of needlework has historic symbolism and meaning. In this instance, I am using the imagery on the tiger needlepoint canvases as the extended metaphor. Tigers often have twins; tigers are strong and resilient; tiger canvases are bountiful and inexpensive on Ebay; and the tiger choice worked out cosmically well when everyone watched The Tiger King during quarantine.

In this series, as in most of my work I incorporate data I’ve collected from my family and the world around me. I tend to focus on themes of parenthood, technology, perseverance and failure. In this, the new bubble of existence, I’ve again turned to my children as a source of data. In this manner I’m documenting this moment in time of quarantine both in the intimacy of our lives and the world at large.