Embroidery Poems
by Andrea Dezsö
Ten years after moving to New York City I embarked on a project of personal significance as a way of exploring my family's beliefs, embedded in the culture of superstitions of my native Transylvania. After teaching myself embroidery, a craft I'd perceived as gendered and oppressive and managed to avoid learning as a girl growing up in Transylvania, I created "Lessons From My Mother," a series of embroideries of hand-stitched words and informational diagrams on white cotton canvas. In time the series expanded to include my mother's continuously evolving personal mythology of men, family, and ghosts.
Andrea Dezsö is a visual artist who works across a broad range of media, including drawing, painting, artist's books, cut paper, embroidery, animation, sculpture, site-specific installation, and permanent public art. Dezsö's mosaic in the New York City subway was awarded Best American Public Art in 2007. Dezsö is an award-winning illustrator whose work has been featured in the New York Times, Sony Music, and Candlewick Press. She is assistant professor of art at Hampshire College in Amherst, MA.