stitches and thread in Chelsea...

this image found here.

You only have until Saturday to see the current exhibit at Lyons Wier which features the thread drawings of Laura Ortiz Vega and the embroideries of Cayce Zavaglia. I of course went to see Cayce's work as it is always worth the trip to Chelsea but I totally was happy to have seen the colorful work of Laura.

Cayce's work was intimately tucked into their small back gallery while Laura's work was in the front space. Laura's work pops off the walls with its color and attention to detail.



Her press release states:

“Cosmograffiti”, Laura Ortiz Vega’s first solo exhibition with Lyons Wier Gallery, fuses traditional Mexican artisanal techniques with contemporary graffiti imagery, creating bold, rich landscapes that entice the eye. Vega appropriates the threading techniques of the Huichol Indians, “painting” her surfaces with colorful threads glued with natural bees wax called cera de Campeche. Laura Ortiz Vega’s process begins with her photographic studies of different graffiti she encounters on her native city streets of Mexico City.


However, Vega does not simply present a reproduction of the original graffiti. Through her own aesthetic filter, she has developed a visual mechanism of inversion, whereby the environmental content of the original source material is recontextualized, giving the viewer a more intimate experience, transforming their encounter from an aggressive, bodily and masculine experience into a more delicate, manual and feminine one. Its immediacy has been suspended, its simplicity transformed into the elaborate, releasing the original message into a new, more obscure and abstract one.

Scale and technique also plays a fundamental role in Vega’s work, providing a discourse related with the marginal, with a culture that may not be considered mainstream or high art, but that possesses formal and conceptual values that are well defined and identifiable.


The work is very beautiful and pulls you in, much like Cayce's does, and invites you to stay there lost in the colors and technique. Then you pull away and experience the content. So worth the trip if you can make it.

Some more awesome stitching inspired by graffiti.