Casablanca, 24" x 24"

"Casablanca: Collaborating With the Dead no. 1"

Archival photo enlargement of a 1952 vintage slide. Embellished with cotton thread and copper wire embroidery.

Photographer: Murray Cole 1929-2018
Embellisher: Nancy Cole

"There is something magical about old slide film. This new work is all about work that has never been seen before. Shot in 1952, a young man with big dreams exploring the world. His first camera, a roll of slide film, and a collaboration with my dead father.

The pandemic, lockdowns, and supply issues forced me to pivot my practice toward a containment process limiting both the size of my work and materials used. I ordered a super-sized commercial cone of white embroidery cotton and used what I had on hand to tint and colour the cotton as I stitched. My plan was to learn one embroidery stitch per month for as long as the lockdown was in force. I started with the French knot, a much loved (or hated) stitch. Three years later I’m still fixated on the French knot. This, combined with the notion of embellishment became the central theme or process that I began exploring in 2021. I turned inward towards a more disturbing connection to my preferred subjects veering towards the human toll. I explore the synthesis of embroidery and photo imagery to tell through masked faces the tale of the COVID-19 pandemic and the loss of identity."

Canadian artist Nancy Cole uses the French knot embroidery stitch to interpret legacy on an obsessive scale. Her work is intimate even with happenstance encounters with strangers. Legacy, abandonment, and nostalgia are the main themes in her primarily figurative, portrait and sometimes conceptual-based practice.  Her combining of photographic imagery and thread work ranges from hyper-realistic to ephemeral bordering on abstract.