Rosemary is a mixed media and textile artist living and working in Vancouver, BC. Rosemary has always been a maker, but only recently discovered her tools for making art: a needle and thread. What began as a fascination with running stitch and sashiko embroidery has developed into a stitching practice that is equal parts exploration and meditation. During the pandemic, Rosemary began stitching on her own jerky iPhone photographs, using lustrous silk thread to amplify the blurred interplay of movement, light and colour. Self-taught as an embroiderer and a photographer, Rosemary’s artwork has been featured in From Confrontation to Catharsis:SDA International Exhibition in Print (2021), and exhibited in group shows in Toronto, Ontario, and Vancouver, Duncan, and Madeira Park, British Columbia. She had her first two-person show at the Kay Meek Arts Centre, West Vancouver, in the fall of 2023.
11:55 am, and after
This piece began with a walk I took in Koishikawa Korakuen, a beautiful garden in the centre of Tokyo, in September, 2023. Later, at home in Vancouver, I sorted through the fabric I collected on that trip: cottons, silks, and printed linen scraps. I found the bright blue sky of that morning in a tenugui towel, the dappled shade of the bridge in a scrap of shibori patterned silk. Dark indigo echoed the dark shadows. Vivid orangey red recalled the bridge. And the smallest scrap of rough silk caught the glint of sunlight on the railing. Slowly, slowly, I stitched together my memories of Japan.
