About the Project

In brief:
Wrought with Care is a collaborative art project exploring needlework samplers designed by artist and scholar Hollis Mickey in May 2010 inspired by a course at Brown University entitled 'designing heritages.'


The project creatively examines the genealogy of needlework samplers, excavating the contexts and uses of samplers of the past and considering how this history informs, and is re-appropriated in, contemporary experience.Using the historical foundation of the samplers of Mary Balch’s School in Providence, Rhode Island and the needlework of Salem Academy in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, Wrought with Care sets out to study, recreate, and consciously adapt historical designs and techniques for the 21st century, ultimately designing meaningful and affective relationships in the present through a re-mediation of the past.


The primary form of the project is this design blog. Twice every month, two posts of printable designs that can be copied, modified and combined with other designs to create a sampler will appear on the blog. The designs are derived from archival research, gathered images of contemporary iterations, and interactions with a person (a 'design consultant') who has offered an important memory to inspire the design. Each post will include the some information on the historical and contemporary inspirations, the design that can be printed and used, a brief theoretical reflection on samplers and sampling based on this experience, and perhaps a short personal narrative from the person who shared a memory.


Design Process with the Consultant
Anyone can volunteer to participate as a design consultant. You simply need to have a memory, real or imagined, that you would like to mark with a 'stitch in time.' After contacting me (hollis@hollismickey.com), that memory is distilled into the design through a process of email exchange, phone conversation, and face-to-face meeting if possible. Together we will look together at images of historical samplers gathered from my research and also consider contemporary sources for design--everything from online memorials, to cards, to newspaper obituaries, to google searches for relevant images. After a simple design, in the form of a straightforward outline, has been derived from these sources, I will stitch that design in the presence of your presence either live, or electronically via technologies like skype. Revisions will be made if you feel the design does not mark your memory meaningfully. Of course, the design will be partial; it will enact erasures; it will, in a sense, be forgetful. However, the hope is that the meaningful process of coming to the design and then making and talking together will recuperate those loses by fostering sincere and touching relations and experiences through human interaction. If you know how to sew, or would like to learn how, I would love to stitch with you! I am glad to teach you how to do basic embroidery so that we can stitch together. During this time of embroidering we will talk about your memory, and allow conversation to intertwine with our stitching. If you feel comfortable, the story of the memory behind your design will be included in the blog post as a narrative or a sound recording. 


Questions:
Through the blog Wrought with Care sets out to ask the following questions:
- How were samplers used to craft and design identity on both an individual and collective scale? How might we use those techniques consciously and productively today?
- Are samplers and the act of sampler making always simultaneously commemorative and creative? How does this parallel the artifacts and making of heritage or history?
- How do processes of commemoration and creation in samplers produce, affirm, and reveal the relations through which we establish subjectivity? How can we design those processes intentionally and conscientiously?


I hope you will join me either as a design consultant or follower of the blog as I embark on this journey in affective stitching, Wrought with Care.