"CRISIS IN CARE"
VERMONT COLLEGE OF FINE ARTS
FELICE GITTELMAN
Physical experience of hand-stitching provides stability, duration and confidence through acts of repetition and patterning. I intuitively trust this physicality of the process, as creating a certain level of safety for my emotions to reside within. By extension, I hope that this work will provide a similar experience of safety and familiarity of touch and repetition of stitching gesture to the viewers of this work. Stitching has a long cross-cultural history, but in my work the focus is on stable, predictable connections between hand and thread, between touching and seeing, and between vulnerability of drawing and the mending of thread.
Fragments stir the undercurrents of lives past and those just beginning. The ocean waves rush in and out leaving momentary images that are rhythmically erased and replaced. The stitching ritual….in and out… allows the hands of my body to align and move with this calm meditation. Fragile dances emerge giving color and form to definitive and indiscriminate moments in time, without judgement.
I am grateful to my mentors who insisted on the strength of simple repetition. I believe that the discipline (same materials, methods, and size) helped to sharpen the intentionality of my work. The act of hand-stitching; its repetition, patterning, and physicality provides me with an understructure of stability, safety, and quiet practice. It is a pathway to the knowledge my body holds, giving me security while realizing my vulnerabilities and bravery to use my voice.
CHEVRA KADISHA
"I SEE IT" - FELICE GITTELMAN
"LUNCH TIME" - FELICE GITTELMAN
"MORNING" - FELICE GITTELMAN
"THE SKY" - FELICE GITTELMAN
"WINDY" - FELICE GITTELMAN
The Chevra Kadisha is a group of volunteers who perform the final rites for the Jewish deceased. Providing a Jew with a proper Jewish burial is considered a sacred duty and a great kindness. I’ve titled my series Chevra Kadisha, which in Hebrew means “sacred society”, to honor my ancestors, especially my great uncle who earned this privilege. This series consists of six drawings poetically representing the journey that Jewish people have gone through, my family being one part of the larger matrix of journeys, diasporas, expulsions and displacements. The drawings are made with cotton embroidery thread stitched onto canvas, which was treated with gesso, acrylic paste, and gouache. Each canvas measures 20 x 20 x 1 ½ inches. The series can be viewed as a matrix of relations between six individual works, creating new visual language when seen as a whole. The relatively small scale of each canvas makes them more intimate in nature, while being part of a series provides them with greater physical presence in space.
The symbolic meaning of my project is revealed in a sequence of abstract drawings that evoke journey and were inspired by how I envision the poetic act of mapping my ancestors’ journey. Their journey is not represented directly. Rather, through stitching and integrated with stitching representations of nature, I share with the viewers the feelings of that at times painful journey and displacement, using the language of nature, ocean debris and biological leftover, indifferent in their anonymous nature, yet also tangible and beautiful, in their formal complexity.
The stitched canvas drawings were inspired by close-up views of biological life left by the ocean as a form of debris or trace, which I documented using digital photography, showing fragments of the beach shoreline in San Jose, CA, last Fall. Seeing the entangled, dead plants and other objects left by the ocean, brought to mind the idea of journey, its fragility, and also how patterns are formed by these entangled beings. I decided to focus on these minute, perhaps insignificant “beings” giving them poetic power through commemorating the lines and patterns they formed in my drawings on canvas, made through stitching, thus remembered.
I am reminded of Judy Chicago’s pivotal project, The Dinner Party, to honor the achievements of women’s art and literature. As her accompanying publication befittingly begins “Embroidering our heritage….”. For me, it is a beautiful metaphor to embrace my discoveries about stitching’s history, my Jewish ancestry, personal trauma, dancing, rituals, knowing, and the efforts of numerous women who relentlessly, arduously and painstakingly sewed to communicate their sense of care and touch despite perpetual dismissive treatment.
"WILDLINGS" - FELICE GITTELMAN
TRIBUTE TO THE WILDINGS
During our Winter VCFA residency, the Wildings cohort group met with our exhibition coordinator, Kate Donnelly, to begin discussions about our graduating exhibition, Summer 2020. We began with a brain-storming activity calling out key words related to our art practices. The words were randomly recorded onto easel size chart paper. We were then asked to look at the written words and voice associations between them. As we spoke, magic marker lines were drawn to represent them. As a follow-up after the residency, Kate sent each of us a picture of the “map” we had drawn (with and without words) as well as an envelope containing cut -up “labels” of each word for further reflection. Due to the pandemic, the Wildings path together has been divided in two. My work above, a stitching of our map image is meant as a tribute to our two-year journey together.
(GRADUATE SHOW)
"CRISIS IN CARE"
VERMONT COLLEGE OF FINE ARTS
FELICE GITTELMAN
Physical experience of hand-stitching provides stability, duration and confidence through acts of repetition and patterning. I intuitively trust this physicality of the process, as creating a certain level of safety for my emotions to reside within. By extension, I hope that this work will provide a similar experience of safety and familiarity of touch and repetition of stitching gesture to the viewers of this work. Stitching has a long cross-cultural history, but in my work the focus is on stable, predictable connections between hand and thread, between touching and seeing, and between vulnerability of drawing and the mending of thread.
Fragments stir the undercurrents of lives past and those just beginning. The ocean waves rush in and out leaving momentary images that are rhythmically erased and replaced. The stitching ritual….in and out… allows the hands of my body to align and move with this calm meditation. Fragile dances emerge giving color and form to definitive and indiscriminate moments in time, without judgement.
I am grateful to my mentors who insisted on the strength of simple repetition. I believe that the discipline (same materials, methods, and size) helped to sharpen the intentionality of my work. The act of hand-stitching; its repetition, patterning, and physicality provides me with an understructure of stability, safety, and quiet practice. It is a pathway to the knowledge my body holds, giving me security while realizing my vulnerabilities and bravery to use my voice.
CHEVRA KADISHA
"I SEE IT" - FELICE GITTELMAN
"LUNCH TIME" - FELICE GITTELMAN
"MORNING" - FELICE GITTELMAN
"THE SKY" - FELICE GITTELMAN
"WINDY" - FELICE GITTELMAN
The Chevra Kadisha is a group of volunteers who perform the final rites for the Jewish deceased. Providing a Jew with a proper Jewish burial is considered a sacred duty and a great kindness. I’ve titled my series Chevra Kadisha, which in Hebrew means “sacred society”, to honor my ancestors, especially my great uncle who earned this privilege. This series consists of six drawings poetically representing the journey that Jewish people have gone through, my family being one part of the larger matrix of journeys, diasporas, expulsions and displacements. The drawings are made with cotton embroidery thread stitched onto canvas, which was treated with gesso, acrylic paste, and gouache. Each canvas measures 20 x 20 x 1 ½ inches. The series can be viewed as a matrix of relations between six individual works, creating new visual language when seen as a whole. The relatively small scale of each canvas makes them more intimate in nature, while being part of a series provides them with greater physical presence in space.
The symbolic meaning of my project is revealed in a sequence of abstract drawings that evoke journey and were inspired by how I envision the poetic act of mapping my ancestors’ journey. Their journey is not represented directly. Rather, through stitching and integrated with stitching representations of nature, I share with the viewers the feelings of that at times painful journey and displacement, using the language of nature, ocean debris and biological leftover, indifferent in their anonymous nature, yet also tangible and beautiful, in their formal complexity.
The stitched canvas drawings were inspired by close-up views of biological life left by the ocean as a form of debris or trace, which I documented using digital photography, showing fragments of the beach shoreline in San Jose, CA, last Fall. Seeing the entangled, dead plants and other objects left by the ocean, brought to mind the idea of journey, its fragility, and also how patterns are formed by these entangled beings. I decided to focus on these minute, perhaps insignificant “beings” giving them poetic power through commemorating the lines and patterns they formed in my drawings on canvas, made through stitching, thus remembered.
I am reminded of Judy Chicago’s pivotal project, The Dinner Party, to honor the achievements of women’s art and literature. As her accompanying publication befittingly begins “Embroidering our heritage….”. For me, it is a beautiful metaphor to embrace my discoveries about stitching’s history, my Jewish ancestry, personal trauma, dancing, rituals, knowing, and the efforts of numerous women who relentlessly, arduously and painstakingly sewed to communicate their sense of care and touch despite perpetual dismissive treatment.
"WILDLINGS" - FELICE GITTELMAN
TRIBUTE TO THE WILDINGS
During our Winter VCFA residency, the Wildings cohort group met with our exhibition coordinator, Kate Donnelly, to begin discussions about our graduating exhibition, Summer 2020. We began with a brain-storming activity calling out key words related to our art practices. The words were randomly recorded onto easel size chart paper. We were then asked to look at the written words and voice associations between them. As we spoke, magic marker lines were drawn to represent them. As a follow-up after the residency, Kate sent each of us a picture of the “map” we had drawn (with and without words) as well as an envelope containing cut -up “labels” of each word for further reflection. Due to the pandemic, the Wildings path together has been divided in two. My work above, a stitching of our map image is meant as a tribute to our two-year journey together.