Flash cards.

Loving the series of digitally embroidered flashcards by Jess Larson. A friend of mine who was once her student brought my attention to her work and I love it.


I have always enjoyed vintage flashcards and the reinterpretation of these by Jess is intriguing, playful, and also critical.


She takes common objects and pairs them with descriptive human qualities in an interesting and provocative way.


Not to mention how gorgeous the objects are themselves.

She describers her work as:

My ongoing creative work recontextualizes and subverts common objects or beliefs as a proxy to examine the complex terrain that women must navigate to shape an identity within a culture offering mixed directives in that pursuit. The conceptual goal is to illuminate the paucity of positive, if not reasonable, feminist social messages by specifically delving into the morass of negative ones in order to reclaim or destroy them from within. Interjecting humor into the critique not only exploits the absurd agendas of such “norms,” but also creates a more hospitable situation to introduce contrary arguments defining why they do not serve women well when considered with a bit of laughter. I deliberately use source materials from the eras belonging to my mother and grandmother in the construction of my imagery—from vintage girdles, dresses, decorative mid-century chalkware, to flash cards used to educate children—as these items reference a bygone era but convey my intentions much clearer than such items of contemporary times. We are more apt to think about inequities faced by women in times when the sexism was more obvious, and perhaps find possibilities in the work that connect to our lives today.

In addition to her flashcards he has an incredible series of highly hand worked and detailed corsets. They feel a bit different in their style as they read almost like minimalist modern sculptures and only as you start to visually explore them do they become the complex commentary that they are. See more of them here.