Last night we put the watches back one hour, marking the official end of summertime. Yet the long and dark Autumn and Winter hours could prove less depressing and more inspiring if we tried to learn a new skill, such as embroidering. Men who think this is a feminine art, should think twice, especially after seeing the works of Brendan Fowler.
The Los Angeles-based musician who turned to art in 2008, has been producing since then photography, sculpture, mixed media artworks and performances.
In 2013 Fowler bought an industrial embroidery machine, taught himself how to use it and started transferring photographs onto large panels of fabrics using coloured thread.
He began producing large canvases on which he embroidered portraits on garments or fabrics: at first the process was exhausting and time-consuming, but he became more skilled as the years passed and produced striking portraits with a punkish edge about them, using found fabrics and recycled garments, polyester and rayon threads.
Upcycling is actually part of his creative process: Fowler often visits thrift stores, checks out the torn and ruined garments sold by the pound and then transforms them with his embroidered panels.
Some of the materials he uses include pieces from the clothing line and record label he founded with Cali Thornhill DeWitt ("Some Ware"), and from his own fashion label and recycling project, "Election Reform".
Fowler started the latter to spark up dialogue about the American electoral system. The cast-off garments from "Election Reform" often end up into his wall-based portraits, his art becomes therefore a form of collage as Fowler creates his works combining various layers together.
The results can be very intriguing and his portraits of friends and colleagues reduced to minimalist shadows, seem suspended between craft and technology as they are made using threads and a computerised embroidery machine with each lock of thread plotted by a face in a digital file.
If you are into fashion rather than art and think that learning how to embroider is not for you, you may change idea once you consider some of the pieces in Sarah Burton's Alexander McQueen S/S 18 collection.
Inspired by British gardens and English country houses, the collection included indeed a burlap dress (criss-crossed by leather straps reminiscent of Middle Ages armors), a corset and boots with cross-stitch roses in fuchsia and pink.
The most eccentric pieces were instead the ethereally eccentric organza wedding dresses with deconstructed corsets covered in three-dimensional exquisite half-embroidered and half-appliqued flowers.
Still uninspired by the art of embroidery? Well, you should check the exhibition "Embellishment in Fashion" at Hampton Court Palace.
Trying to capture the style and versatility of embroidery and embellishment from the 18th to 21st centuries, the event showcases a wide range of pieces from the Royal School of Needlework (RSN)'s unique Textile Collection, from blouses and men's waistcoats to purses, gloves and shoes.
Apart from the ordinary basic tours and curator's tours, it is also possible to enroll in a taster workshop that gives visitors the chance to try their hand at an embroidery session inspired by the exhibition itself.
If you finally get the embroidery bug, you may as well check out the RSN's Knitting & Stitching in Dublin (9-12 November) and Harrogate (23 – 26 November) shows. They will provide more inspirations thanks to the pieces on display such as the stumpwork by RSN Diploma in Technical Hand Embroidery student Ghislaine Peart based on Dee Nickerson's painting "Village Knitters". Looks like you may have no excuses not to try and learn the art of embroidery this Fall/Winter.
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