letters, maps, and wreaths, oh my!

I recently came to the work of artist Gina Dawson. She works with both paper and the stitch often being a little tongue and cheek but simultaneously creating a form of portrait.


Her work is quite conceptual and I always love conceptual with traditional medium. Disappointingly her website is a very simple blog that does not have very much info, enough pictures, or big enough pictures. Her work is really all about the details so it is frustrating to me as a online viewer to not really get any of the details. Medium is also generally not mentioned.


The first work I saw was her Hollywood map a highly detailed cross stitch map of Hollywood recording the spots where celebrities reside or have resided.


I found it to be clever and hilarious that she also stitched the receipts from Blockbuster that represent the movies she watched while working on the piece. It made me think of the awesome work by my friend Amanda Tiller.




She also did an art universe map, I would love to read all the names of the people at the center of the universe.


Her most recent work in stitch are the recreations of her "rejection letters" I always find it interesting when artists glean from these for their work. Orly Cogan did a series of pillows that dealt with rejection and Kate Kretz did a series on "Art World Truths" that has a similar resonance.

Orly Cogan

Kate Kretz

Gina inspired by the language of the rejection letters then went on to make her "Wreaths."

funeral wreaths with text pulled from my personal rejection letters. I created these pieces after stitching some of my rejection letters and becoming fascinated with the language used to let someone down. Both the funeral wreath and the rejection letter are objects of consolation that can't possibly make up for the loss. This work is still in progress.

I think the wreaths are made from paper and they look like they are pretty incredible in their detail and I would love to see detail shots of the wreaths and the selection of words on them. I was surprised to see how small they were, as I thought they were life size on first impression. I would be interested to see them in person and experience them on a small scale.

I like Gina's way of thinking a lot and would be curious as to what she is focused on now. Since she is Brooklyn based maybe I will have the chance to see her work in an exhibit someday. See more of her work here.