Scrapped Medals
Cyril Gordon
My thesis was exploratory and didn’t follow a straightforward direction. My goal was to create pieces that allowed texture and fabric to dictate a mood, allowing text to be obscured. I wanted to challenge myself to assert the emotional content of text with materials. Blind Spot was an experiment with cyanotype image-making on fabric. The irregular nature of the printing process rendered the text semi-legible, leaving the texture of the fabric the focus. Not Tonight But Tomorrow is a print treatment of Miguel Algarín’s 1978 poem. The text is preceded by images on vellum that obscure the text with a misty texture. Each image relates to the content of the poem. Archive Pins of LGBT Significance started with documenting the pin collection at the Lesbian Herstory Archives in Brooklyn. Out of hundreds of pins, I selected several slogans to embroider on scraps of fabric. I considered the history of embroidery as a predominantly female pasttime, as well as the DIY culture of the LGBT community, including the AIDS quilt. The vibrant floral fabric that recurs in the embroidery was chosen for its reference to the time period when many of these pins were created, but also for its joyful exuberance, which reflects the emotions the pins’ creators felt in defiance of a narrow-minded world. This work is still in progress—I hoped to stitch the scraps together as pages in a fabric book. Unfortunately I did not have access to a sewing machine or materials after leaving school. I hope to expand this.