Sophia Narrett | Portfolio Sophia Narrett

SOPHIA NARRETT | PORTFOLIO SOPHIA NARRETT

My work is ultimately about love. My narratives consider romance as a transformative experience that has the ability to bring purpose, initiate self discovery, alleviate pain, and offer joy, as well as its potential to bring heartbreak and miscommunication. While romance can be an escape from tragedy, isolation, and even boredom, its power can be tied to those moments when excitement borders on toxicity, or play bleeds into manipulation, and when the inherent danger of power exchange (real or imagined) comes to light.

I try to honestly depict my fantasies, desires and fears in a way that does justice to my feelings, while also pursuing an awareness of the social implications of images. Each piece begins as a narrative premise shaped by my experiences or thoughts. I then illustrate these stories by embroidering from collages built with source images gathered on the Internet, photos I’ve taken, and screenshots from movies or TV. These images add a layer to the narrative that connect it to larger social contexts, and potentially allow viewers a point of access, through specificity and detail rather than through recognition of the initial source. I repurpose the language of pop culture and the Internet into my own narratives, responding to a perilous media and political landscape with my own fantasies.

As I depict narratives exploring the power of intimacy and desire, I use the slow and careful process of embroidery to respond to the instantaneous, often treacherous media experience we face in 2019. I transitioned from oil paint to embroidery in 2010. It initially happened by chance, I had some of the thread leftover from a sculptural experiment and I was so attracted to the thread on a material level that it seemed natural to try sewing a simple outline drawing in thread. From there I was obsessed. The set palette, the experience of building images stitch by stitch, and the ability to make pieces that are objects as much as they are windows or images, was incredibly exciting for me. As a painter I was driven by images; I wanted to create spatially unfolding narratives onto which the viewer could project their own experiences. Embroidery became a way for me to invest even deeper in these narratives, and to move beyond just depicting the stories, into a space where the emotional content of each piece was sublimated into its materiality, as well described through its content.

Although I initially came to embroidery for material reasons, I relate to the history of feminist art that has given fiber art, and craft in general, a voice in the contemporary art world. I think of embroidery (and its implicit history) as helping to specify the tone that my stories are told in, one characterized by obsession, desire, and both the freedoms and restraints of femininity. In some ways, my work pushes the limits of embroidery by exploring sexual and existential questions, when the history of the medium is primarily one of domesticity and decoration. As a woman working in embroidery in 2019, my motivation is to make images I need to see, and to describe specific fantasies and fears. Explicit imagery is a part of this. I’m not interested in embroidering these images for the reason that the history of embroidery puts it at odds with eroticism and that it is a transgression to collide the two. Rather, embroidery is the medium that feels most authentic for me to create images in. Before I was necessarily aware of it, Jane Austen novels and tv shows like The Bachelor were shaping my identity. In my work I alternately indulge in these fantasies, question, lament, and criticize them. Embroidery, with its inescapable history, embodies this precarious relationship to societal definitions of the feminine. It is important that no matter how contemporary the narrative, or how visually seductive the material beauty of the piece becomes, embroidery will always implicitly acknowledge the injustices that women have faced for centuries.

The pace that embroidery dictates has become a way for me to commit to images, and to speak about intense content in a sincere way. This devotion is readable in the physical objects, and becomes a point of connection through which viewers can experience the narratives. As a ubiquity of screens defines our daily lives, the inherent sincerity of the handmade holds increasing potential to express desire, invite projection, and to question and reflect on our collective experiences. It is often the craft of the embroidery that becomes a Trojan horse for confrontational elements of content in my work, as the labor-intensive surface invites viewers into more difficult narrative territory. Viewers who might have felt threatened or resistant to the sex positive, feminist, and at times dark narratives in my work have described being initially drawn in by the beauty of a piece’s construction, only then to realize what it was depicting. By that point we were already in dialogue, in a conversation which words alone might have failed to initiate. As our country becomes more and more politically and socially divided, I see craft as a way to connect, and to share messages of love and humanism.

I want to depict confusing interactions between people, especially those that let imagination and desire blur reality and involve some kind of roleplay. I’m interested in the ways that adults play, whether their games are consensual or manipulative, and the emotional results of escapism. Emotional and sexual experiences can be transcendent. I want to depict the type of space that intense relationships can potentially create for the people involved, and how this can be a source of meaning in a secular world. I’m thinking about the different ways that people try to connect to each other, and also what happens when these efforts fall short or backfire. EDUCATION

2014 Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Skowhegan, ME 2014 Rhode Island School of Design, MFA Painting, Providence, RI 2010 Brown University, BA with Honors in Visual Art, magna cum laude, Providence, RI

SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2018 Certain Magic, BRIC Arts | Media House, Brooklyn, NY 2016 Early in the Game, Freight + Volume, New York, NY 2016 Lux Art Institute, Encinitas, CA 2015 This Meant Nothing, Arts+Leisure, New York, NY 2013 I Was Dreaming This, Space Gallery, Portland, ME 2010 Love Sleep, Gallery 210, List Art Center, Brown University, Providence, RI

GROUP EXHIBITIONS

2019 Burke Prize 2019, Museum of Arts and Design, New York, NY Idol Worship, Smack Mellon, Brooklyn, NY, Curated by Emily Colucci Do You Love Me?, PPOW, New York, NY, Curated by Eden Deering By Our Own Hands, Camayuhs, Atlanta, GA, Curated by Heidi Norton Can You Dream It? (Yes I can.), Kristen Lorello, New York, NY, Curated by Scott Alario Ariadne Unraveling, Asya Geisberg, New York, NY A Heart Shaped Face, Two Person Show with Paul Rouphail, Jack Barrett, New York, NY 2018 Through Her Eye, Mana Contemporary, Chicago, IL, Curated by Ysabel Pinyol and Mashonda Tifrere MAD Collects, Museum of Arts and Design, New York, NY, Curated by Shannon R. Stratton with Assistant Curators Samantha De Tillio and Barbara Paris Gifford Hush, Marinaro, New York, NY, Curated by Eden Deering and Sydney Fishman SKINS, Greenpoint Terminal Gallery, Brooklyn, NY, Curated by Brian Willmont SEED, Paul Kasmin Gallery, New York, NY, curated by Yvonne Force Metamorphosis, Lightly (Intimacy of Form), OOF Books, Los Angeles, CA Curated by Alex Rojas Unveil, SPRING/BREAK Art Show, New York, NY, curated by Marie Salomé Handmade: Women Reshaping Contemporary Art, Westport Art Center, Westport, CT, curated by Elizabeth Gorayeb The Garden of Earthly Delights, Deanna Evans Projects, Brooklyn, NY curated by Karen Gilbert 2017 Intimate Lines: Drawing With Thread, Hunterdon Art Museum, Clinton, NJ, Curated by Carol Eckert Narrative Horizons, The Galleries at Moore, Moore College of Art & Design, Philadelphia, PA, Curated by Gabrielle Lavin Suzenski Stranger Than Paradise, RISD Museum, Curated by Dominic Molon Figurative Futures, 101/Exhibit, Los Angeles, CA, Curated by Mark Murphy NSFW: FEMALE GAZE, Museum of Sex, New York, NY,Curated by Marina Garcia Vasquez and Lissa Rivera No Vacancy II, Squat Gallery, Brooklyn, NY, Curated by Alison Sirico and Irina V Makarova Rijswijk Textile Biennial, Museum Rijswijk, South Holland, Netherlands Minus the Sun, SPRING/BREAK Art Show, New York, NY, curated by Marie Salomé The Staging of Vulnerability, SPRING/BREAK Art Show, New York, NY curated by Allison Zuckerman 2016 It Started With a Rose, 315 Gallery, Brooklyn, NY, Curated by Cecilia Salama Stark Naked: Uncovering Bodies, Objects, and the Futility of Desire, Gallery Kayafas, Boston, MA curated by Robert Moeller, J.R. Uretsky, Franklin Evans, Lillian P.H. Kology, Sam Toabe, and Gabriel Sosa Material Cultures, BRIC Arts | Media House, Brooklyn, NY, Curated by Jordana Munk Martin, Elizabeth Ferrer, and Jenny Gerow Fourth Wall, Booth Gallery, New York, NY Ladies Babies Hades, Collar Works, Troy, NY Nature Gone Wrong, Drive By Projects, Watertown, MA 2015 (Em)Power Dynamics, The Gateway Project, Newark, NJ, Curated by Jasmine Wahi Your Bad Self, Arts+Leisure, New York, NY Pussy Don’t Fail Me Now, Cindy Rucker Gallery, New York, NY Dear Mama, The Department of Signs + Symbols, Brooklyn, NY Curated by Jacques Smith + Rachel Libeskind 2014 EXTRACT IV Young Art Prize CPH 2014, Kunstforeningen GL STRAND Copenhagen, Denmark Wanderers in a Sea of Smog, Katrina Van Tassel Projects, New York, NY Curated by Christian Ruiz Berman New Contemporaries, Gelman Gallery, RISD, Providence, RI, Curated by Mark Moscone RISD 2014 MFA Painting, Nancy Margolis Gallery, New York, NY RISD Graduate Thesis Exhibition, RI Convention Center, Providence, RI Garden, Drive-By Projects, Watertown, MA RISD 2014 MFA Painting, Nancy Margolis Gallery, New York, NY RISD Thesis Exhibition, Rhode Island Convention Center, Providence, RI The Last Brucennial, 837 Washington Street, NY Reading Room, Gelman Gallery, RISD, Providence, RI Curated by Seojung Min and Wangui Maina 50/50 : artist/context, Gelman Gallery, RISD, Providence, RI Curated by Chloe Lee and Minkyoung Kim 2013 Urban Eroticism, Arcilesi & Homberg Fine Art, Brooklyn, NY Show #8, The Parlour Bushwick, Brooklyn, NY Time After Time, Arcilesi & Homberg Fine Art, Brooklyn, NY The Sublime Revisited, Ann Street Gallery, Newburgh, NY At Your Leisure, 111 Front Street Gallery 200, Brooklyn, NY, Curated by Masha Firunts Summer Show, SHOW ROOM, New York, NY 2012 Too Big to Fail, Sol Koffler Graduate Student Gallery, RISD, Providence, RI These Favorite Things, Jordan Faye Contemporary, Baltimore, MD End of Days, Mixed Greens, New York, NY Love, The Arthur M. Berger Art Gallery, Manhattanville College, Purchase, NY 2011 Residue: The 22nd Drawing Show, Mills Gallery, Boston Center for the Arts Boston, MA, Curated by Steven Holmes Public Art Academy Artist in Residence Exhibition, The Pajama Factory Williamsport, PA Oops! On Purpose, Grey Gallery, Williamsport, PA Play, Textile Arts Center, Brooklyn, NY, Curated by Joetta Maue Spring Arts Festival, The Perry and Marty Granoff Center for the Creative Arts Brown University, Providence, RI 2009 Me & We: The Individual and The Collective, Brown/RISD Hillel Gallery Project, Providence, RI, Juried by Robin Cembalest and Curated by William Stover or Outstanding Progress, University of the Arts, Philadelphia, PA

AWARDS

2018 Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant 2015 New American Paintings Annual Reader’s Choice Prize 2014 Rhode Island School of Design Skowhegan Matching Fellowship, Providence, RI 2010 The William and Alethe Weston Fine Arts Award, Brown University, Providence, RI 2010 Creative Arts Council Grant, Brown University, Providence, RI

COLLECTIONS

Museum of Arts and Design, New York, NY CAPP Collection of Contemporary Art at the University of Maryland, College Park, MD The Rhode Island School of Design Museum, Providence, RI Brown University Creative Arts Council, Providence, RI BIBLIOGRAPHY

2019 Johanna Fateman, “Do You Love Me?,” The New Yorker, July 26. 2018 Matt Mitchell, “Webs of Eros,” Beautiful Bizarre, Novmber 1. Matt Mitchell, “SEED Curated by Yvonne Force at Paul Kasmin Gallery” Beautiful Bizarre, August 3. Michela Moscufo, “Seed,” The Brooklyn Rail, August 17. Emma Latham Phillips, “Sophia Narrett’s intimate embroideries explore the complexities of human relationships,” It’s Nice That, July 25. Sophia Narrett, “One Piece: Stuck,” BOMBmagazine.org, July 25. Caroline Goldstein, “Beat the Heat With These 19 Summer Group Shows on View Now in New York,” Artnet News, July 4. “Fresh Friday: Sophia Narrett,” Art Talk Collective, June 29. Kristen Tauer, “Yvonne Force Curates ‘Seed’ Group Art Show at Paul Kasmin” WWD, June 27. Sameul Abelow, “SEED EXHIBITION: FEMININE PSYCHE AND MYSTICISM IN ART,” June 25. Chandra Noyes, “’SEEDs’ of Feminine Mysticism at Paul Kasmin Gallery” Art & Object, June 19. Sarah Cascone, “Editors’ Picks,” Artnet News, June 11. Emily Colucci, “Love To Love You Baby: Sewing Threads of Desire in Sophia Narrett’s ‘Certain Magic’” Filthy Dreams, June 10. Emma Howcroft, “Untangling Sex, Cyberspace, and Taboo: Sophia Narrett’s Certain Magic at BRIC Arts Media,” Whitehot Magazine, May 30. Leslie Camhi, “Some of the Most Provocative Political Art is Made With Fibers,” T: The New York Times Style Magazine, March 14. Katherine Bernard, “BDSM Is Everywhere From High Culture to High Fashion” Garage Magazine, February 16. Sarah Sharp, “Sophia Narrett,” Pine Magazine No. 2 Jessica Romero, “Estos bordados eróticos chorrean sensualidad y surrealismo,” VICE Magazine Mexico, January 5. 2017 Ariela Gittlen, “11 Artists Using Embroidery in Radical Ways,” Artsy November 21. Alina Cohen, “Not Safe for Work,” The Nation, September 18. Ariela Gittlen, “Sophia Narrett,” Elephant Magazine, Autumn. Amanda Chatel, “This Exhibit Will Make You Question Everything You Know About Female Sexuality,” Bustle, July 13. Adam Lehrer, “10 Female Artists Exploring Their Sexualities At A Show At Museum Of Sex,” Forbes.com, June 28. Alexxa Gotthardt, “The Museum of Sex Recasts Itself as an Edgy Art Space,” Artsy, June 27. Kurt Mcvey, “NSFW: Female Gaze at the Museum of Sex” Whitehot Magazine, June. Casey Lesser, “16 Curators to Watch at SPRING/BREAK,” Artsy, March 1. 2016 Casey Lesser, “A Brooklyn Show Brings Together 8 Young Artists Grappling with Romance in the Digital Age,” Artsy, November 8. Molly Elizalde, “Sophia Narrett Explores Eroticism and Role Play in her Surreal Embroideries,” i-D, November 2. Emily Colucci, “Sophia Narrett: Sewing Subversion,” Frontrunner, October 23. Marley C. Smit, “An Exclusive Interview with Embroidery Artist Sophia Narrett,” D/RAILED, October 22. Diana Shi, “It All Starts With a Rose In a Diverse Multimedia Show in Brooklyn,” The Creators Project, October 16. Casey Lesser, “16 New York Gallery Shows Where You’ll Find Exciting Young Artists This October,” Artsy, September 30. Andrew Salomone, “Brooklyn Textile Artists Weave a Delicate Social Fabric” The Creators Project, September 28. Laura Grasso, “In the Studio: Sophia Narrett,” TEQUILA & DENIM September 18. Scott Indrisek, “LOOSE THREADS: What We Talk About When We Talk About The Bachelor,” Early in the Game Exhibition Catalog 17, p 133-138. Michael Anthony Farley, “This Week’s Must See Art Events: Cuban Death Metal Sci-Fi, Art Book Fairs, and More,” Art F City, September 13. Sara Softness, “On Religion, and Other Stories,” Material Cultures Exhibition Catalog, September 7. Sophia Narrett, “Sophia Narrett on Edgar Degas,” Painters on Paintings July 18 Liisa Silander, “Following the Thread,” RISD XYZ, Spring/Summer. Genista Jurgens, “On Hand: Sophia Narrett,” Format Magazine, April 11. “Sophia Narrett,” Silence is Accurate, January. Michael James Rocha, “At Lux, Sophia Narrett pushes the limits of thread” San Diego Union Tribune, January 22. 2015 Tyrrell Winston, “Sophia Narrett Studio Visit,” MTV RE:DEFINE, November 5. Rain Embuscado, “13 Female Artists Re-Imagine America at Gateway Project Spaces,” Artnet News, September 13. Ilsoon Jeon, “’Pussy Don’t Fail Me Now’ at Cindy Rucker Gallery,” Arte Fuse July 22. James Chute, “Lux announces 2015-16 artist residencies,” The San Diego Union-Tribune, July 9. Katherine Brooks, “Embroidered Paintings Conjure Fantasy Mashup Of ‘The Bachelor’ And ‘OITNB,’” The Huffington Post, June 26. Jillian Steinhauer, “Hand-Stitched Fantasies of Reality TV,” Hyperallergic June 25. Allie Biswas, “Sophia Narrett: ‘I see the sewing process as akin to drawing’” Studio International, June 24. Alison Martin, “Sophia Narrett’s series of embroideries tell intricate love story,” Examiner.com, June 5. Audra Lambert, “Meaning + Process at Sophia Narrett’s Art + Leisure Solo Show ‘This Meant Nothing,’” Art Nerd New York, June 2. Kat Herriman, “Sophia Narrett’s Common Threads,” W Magazine, May 21. Liz Von Klemperer, “Sophia Narrett: Turns “Women’s Work” into Beautifully Disturbing Landscapes,” Art Report, May 1. “Sophia Narrett ‘Paints’ With Wool In Her Romantic Embroideries,” Beautiful/ Decay, April 13. New American Paintings, MFA Annual Issue 117, Curated by Anna Stothart, April/May. 2014 Katherine Brooks, “The Heavenly Union Of Painting And Embroidery, Courtesy Of Artist Sophia Narrett,” The Huffington Post, August 12. Greg Cook, “A Diverse Display: Eight standouts at the RISD Graduate Thesis Exhibition 2014,” The Providence Phoenix, May 21. Bill Van Siclen, “RISD grad show at Convention Center through May 31,” The Providence Journal, May 22. Sarah Cascone, “Final Brucennial Opens With Beer, Bacon, and Bullish Performance Art,” Artnet News, March 8. Jillian Steinhauer, “Do It Yourself and Do It Well at Fountain Art Fair” Hyperallergic, March 7. 2013 Britta Konau, “Sophia Narrett’s Update on the Romantics,” The Portland Phoenix, May 30. Bob Keyes, “Uncommon Thread at Space Gallery,” Portland Press Herald, May 9. Jamie Thompson, “Sophia Narrett: I Was Dreaming This,” Artscope Magazine May/June. Alissa Tallman, Stitches Magazine, March/April, p 44. Joetta Maue, “Future Heirlooms-Sophia Narrett,” Mr. X Stitch, April 5. 2012 Janna Rice, “Ordered Chaos at Jordan Faye Contemporary,” UrCity Magazine December 9. 2011 “Sophia Narrett: Art,” Paper Darts Online, December 14. “Monumental Concepts,” Itch Online Magazine, South Africa, September 15. Matthew Parrish, “Meet the Artists in Residence,” The Williamsport Sun Gazette, Williamsport, PA, June 12. Sophia Narrett, Wishes, 2019 Embroidery thread, acrylic, aluminum and fabric, 72 x 39 inches detail: Sophia Narrett, Wishes, 2019 Embroidery thread, acrylic, aluminum and fabric, 72 x 39 inches Sophia Narrett, Press, 2019 L: Sophia Narrett, Bow, 2019, Embroidery thread and fabric, 5 3/4 x 4 1/4 inches Embroidery thread and fabric, 13 x 7 1/2 inches R: Sophia Narrett, Grin, 2019, Embroidery thread and fabric, 7 3/4 x 5 1/2 inches L: Sophia Narrett, Bow, 2019, Embroidery thread and fabric, 5 3/4 x 4 1/4 inches R: Sophia Narrett, Grin, 2019, Embroidery thread and fabric, 7 3/4 x 5 1/2 inches Sophia Narrett, A More Careful Recipe, 2018 detail: Sophia Narrett, A More Careful Recipe, 2018 Embroidery thread and fabric, 33 x 46 inches Embroidery thread and fabric, 33 x 46 inches Sophia Narrett, A More Careful Recipe, 2018 detail: Sophia Narrett, A More Careful Recipe, 2018 Embroidery thread and fabric, 33 x 46 inches Embroidery thread and fabric, 33 x 46 inches Sophia Narrett, Right Before, 2017-18 detail: Sophia Narrett, Right Before, 2017-18 Embroidery thread, acrylic, aluminum and fabric, 82 x 26 inches Embroidery thread, acrylic, aluminum and fabric, 82 x 26 inches detail: Sophia Narrett, Right Before, 2017-18 Embroidery thread, acrylic, aluminum and fabric, 82 x 26 inches Sophia Narrett, Princess Time, 2016 detail: Sophia Narrett, Princess Time, 2016 Embroidery thread and fabric, 40 x 22 inches Embroidery thread and fabric, 40 x 22 inches detail: Sophia Narrett, Princess Time, 2016 Embroidery thread and fabric, 40 x 22 inches Sophia Narrett, Stuck, 2016 Embroidery thread and fabric, 38 x 62 inches detail: Sophia Narrett, Stuck, 2016 Embroidery thread and fabric, 38 x 62 inches L: Sophia Narrett, Card One Cry, 2016, Embroidery thread and fabric, 3 1/2 x 2 1/2 inches Sophia Narrett, Stars Align, 2014-15 R: Sophia Narrett, Take Your Time, 2016, Embroidery thread and fabric, 4 3/4 x 3 inches Embroidery thread and fabric, 48 x 33 inches L: Sophia Narrett, Card One Cry, 2016, Embroidery thread and fabric, 3 1/2 x 2 1/2 inches Sophia Narrett, Stars Align, 2014-15 R: Sophia Narrett, Take Your Time, 2016, Embroidery thread and fabric, 4 3/4 x 3 inches Embroidery thread and fabric, 48 x 33 inches detail: Sophia Narrett, Stars Align, 2014-15 Sophia Narrett, Something Went Wrong, 2014-15 Embroidery thread and fabric, 48 x 33 inches Embroidery thread and fabric, 48 x 33 inches detail: Sophia Narrett, Stars Align, 2014-15 Sophia Narrett, Something Went Wrong, 2014-15 Embroidery thread and fabric, 48 x 33 inches Embroidery thread and fabric, 48 x 33 inches detail: Sophia Narrett, Something Went Wrong, 2014-15 Sophia Narrett, The Rose Ceremony, 2014 Embroidery thread and fabric, 48 x 33 inches Embroidery thread and fabric, 16 x 19 inches Sophia Narrett, The Rose Ceremony, 2014 Embroidery thread and fabric, 16 x 19 inches detail: Sophia Narrett, The Rose Ceremony, 2014 Embroidery thread and fabric, 16 x 19 inches INSTALLATION EXTRACT IV Young Art Prize CPH 2014, Kunstforeningen GL STRAND, Copenhagen, Denmark, 2014-15 A Heart Shaped Face, Two Person Show with Paul Rouphail, Jack Barrett, New York, NY, 2019 Early in the Game, Freight + Volume, New York, NY, 2016 Early in the Game, Freight + Volume, New York, NY, 2016 Early in the Game, Freight + Volume, New York, NY, 2016 SEED, Paul Kasmin Gallery, New York, NY, curated by Yvonne Force, 2018 Certain Magic, BRIC Arts | Media House, Brooklyn, NY, 2018 PRESS For Sophia Narrett, the slow process of hand stitching richly detailed narratives proves to be far more satisfying than using a brush and paint.

AS WITH MANY GOOd THINGS IN LIFE, Sophia Narrett MFA 14 PT discovered thread by chance. And once she did, she began to find her voice. Narrett was at Brown—majoring in visual arts—when she bought a few skeins of green thread to sew details onto the felt four-leaf clovers she was making for an installation her senior year. Since she primarily thought of herself as a painter, the immediate feel of the material—the thrill of thread in her hands—surprised her. “After that initial project, the embroidery thread sat around in my “I’m able to connect with studio for awhile,” Narrett explains. “But a few months later I was still primarily interested in making image-driven work, and one day the physical qualities of it seemed natural to try making a simple drawing in thread.” As soon as she did, the thrill of the process returned, she says. “I was able embroidery more than I had to connect with the physical qualities of embroidery more than I had been able to with paint.” been able to with paint.” In the six years she has been experimenting with embroidery, Narrett has pushed her own needlework capabilities to new levels, transforming a traditional craft historically associated with women’s work. Forget cutesy kits full of bouquets and butterflies, the Brooklyn-based artist stitches up a storm of sensual, intricate and meticulously detailed narratives of contemporary life that help her make sense of her “own fantasies and emotional experiences.”

by Liisa Silander photo by Tyrrell Mooney photo by Tyrrell “ I’m a very sensitive person and I easily get invested in psychological dramas, or to be honest, in almost any reality TV show.”

And she does so by tapping into pop culture to reference problematic aspects in the storytelling. I’m a very sensitive movies, books, hiphop artists, fashion designers and plenty of person—maybe overly sensitive—and I easily get invested cable and streaming content. “I love to listen to long TV series in psychological dramas, or to be honest, in almost any while I work,” says Narrett, who has consumed the entire multi- reality TV show.” season runs of both The Wire and The Sopranos several times. As these bold, explicit and often violent and bloody Her most recent series of embroideries, titled This Meant narratives unfold on screen, Narrett quietly stitches for hours Nothing, features an actress and a writer from the Netflix on end, making her own refined and transcendent work. favorite Orange Is the New Black as characters in her own “I began working in embroidery for formal and material fictional narrative. The ill-fated love story symbolically begins reasons,” she says, but “the history of embroidery as a during a rose ceremony on The Bachelor, a context Narrett traditional craft undeniably influences the meaning of my says she chose for its “expression of desperation—and a real, work.” Clearly, her approach to embroidery veers from if somewhat overwrought, desire for connection—as much as a practice passed down for generations—almost exclusively for its embodiment of patriarchy and heteronormativity.” by women. “Narrett’s pieces are reminiscent of 16th-century Dutch “I think it can be a powerful thing to embrace your own painter Hieronymus Bosch, known for his detailed landscapes desires,” Narrett says, explaining that little makes her and wild images, most fantastical and sexual in nature,” notes happier than embroidering. “The fact that for centuries Michael rocha in a recent story in The San Diego Union women were socialized to do this—or analogous activities— Tribune. “Like Bosch, Narrett engages the viewer in images in a way that I assume did not allow for the level of self- As she was looking for the right source images for her so complex—so detailed—that looking at them and following expression or exploration that my work provides me is a embroidery, Narrett became intrigued by the breaking story the narrative… feels almost voyeuristic.” complicated and very real fact. For better or for worse, that Lauren Morelli, a writer on Orange Is the New Black, had Drawing from the entertainment industry gives Narrett I’m a very feminine person, so embroidery may be a way just left her husband in order to date Samira Wiley, an actress on the show. In the end, the narrative in this piece, Stars Align a way to communicate using a visual language with widely of working with that in a genuine way, although it has never (2014–15, embroidery thread and fabric, 33 x 48") from the shared symbols and images. Even though viewers may not really been a conscious strategy. I think of embroidery the This Meant Nothing series, isn’t “about” them per se, she says, recognize the exact source, it gives them “a point of access,” way I thought of paint when I was a painter: It’s the best “but the way their relationship was framed by the press—and the way their relationship began in proximity to fiction—resonated she says. “Often shows dealing with seemingly cliché situa- physical way for me to create the narratives I want to think with things that I was trying to explore with the series.” tions can tap into something very real, even if there are about and communicate.” photos by Stan Narten

sophianarrett.com // RISDXYZ spring/summer 2 016 21 pHYSICAL prOCESS By the time she applied to RISD, Narrett knew that even When Narrett was a girl growing up in Ellicott City, MD, though she had started to work with embroidery as her she loved playing with the wooden dollhouse her father medium of choice, she wanted to be a part of a painting and brother made for her. “I made tons of things to go in it,” dialogue. “Doing a master’s in Painting at RISD was a process she says, “and I was always acting out narratives between of trying to understand exactly what I wanted to say, and how the dolls.” to say it,” she explains. “Being part of this dialogue allowed me Even though she reluctantly let go of her Barbies in junior to take a deeper look at my work, to begin to understand high school, Narrett suspects that her current passion for inclinations or tendencies that were a part of my process—and embroidery may stem from a similar sensibility. “I feel a deep to question them. Self-awareness is really difficult to achieve, responsibility for the type of images I’m putting out into the and working at RISD allowed me to make some great strides world,” she says, “but when I’m truly just starting a piece, I feel towards this, both in terms of my work and personally.” like it’s more connected to imagination and doll play.” Though Narrett now works with thread instead of oils, she Narrett first got interested in art through her grandmother, learned a lot about color and composition through painting. a painter who loved to copy Chagall. Until she got to Brown, She also believes that her embroideries “function as paintings” Chagall’s paintings (“especially the ones with the floating and in many ways, aren’t really “any different from paintings.” bodies”) summed up her sense of “what a painting was—and That said, with embroidery she loves “the specific material even more so, what art was.” quality of the image and also the time element.” The painstakingly slow process of sewing intricately detailed narratives by hand allows the meaning behind her work to surface as each piece develops. Narrett starts by making a collage in Photoshop that illustrates the story or part of a story she intends to embroider and then draws an outline of the image onto cotton fabric. She then works freehand to essentially paint or draw with thread, while looking at the

In I Can’t Stop Crying Except Sometimes Photoshop collage for reference. But it’s through the process When I Think About Ari Gold (2016, embroidery of stitching that things really shift and come alive. thread and fabric, 34 x 12") the devastated person “I definitely think there’s value in the delayed gratification in this piece is lying on the floor, too sad to even of the process,” Narrett says. “The pace that embroidery sit in the chair. Narrett incorporated a framed portrait of Gold, the obnoxious movie agent in the dictates has become an incredibly meaningful way for me to long-running bro-fest of a show Entourage, after commit to the stories I want to tell.” a participant on a reality dating show described While conceptualizing each piece is clearly driven by ideas, him “as her ideal man,” Narrett says. The woman on the show professed to “like his aggression, research and intense thinking, Narrett says that during the dominance and faithfulness, but completely ignored sewing process her hands and mind work together as one. “I’m his misogyny, racism and anger issues.” constantly making decisions about how to render in thread,” she says. “I enjoy the challenge of simple aspects like how to get something to look like it’s in front of something else, what color to use in a specific place so another color will contrast with it in the right way, and just generally how to translate the images into embroidery. As much as it’s representation, it’s also a process of abstraction in a way—to reinterpret an image in thread. And at a certain point the materiality takes over. Usually halfway or so through a piece I’ll go back and revise the initial Photoshop collage based on what’s happening physically. I plan a lot but the embroidery takes on a life of its own in a way I find really satisfying.” photo by Tyrrell Mooney left: photo by Tyrrell

Self Care (2016, embroidery and fabric, 46 x 16") “ I plan a lot but the embroidery presents a row of five eligible bachelors, seated in a bar above a row of Tinder buttons. The Valerian takes on a life of its own in a tea bags—often referred to as nature’s Valium—and the Bandaids that hang from the flowering branches way I find really satisfying.” are semi-ludicrous gestures that are ultimately unable to protect the heart from the miscommunication and confusion typical of dating. “On a more optimistic note,” Narrett adds, “the bachelors are potentially sweet men who might actually offer

top and facing page: photos by Stan Narten | emotional healing.”

22 // following the thread Sophia Narrett MFA 14 PT sophianarrett.com // RISDXYZ spring/summer 2 016 23 Something Went Wrong (2014–15, embroidery “The threads that she leaves thread and fabric, 35 x 53") is another piece from Narrett’s This Meant Nothing series, a sequential hanging are almost like narrative of four pieces that relate to each other in a linear fashion. This one focuses on the ill-fated music and very emotional.” love story between two women who meet on an episode of The Bachelor, which for Narrett reesey Shaw, Lux Art Institute epitomizes a “context of heteronormativity and patriarchy” and points to a “desperation for love” that’s universal.

Narrett also likes that the time she spends sewing each piece “leaves a physical residue that is readable” and hopefully invites the close inspection her work demands. “When something has been touched and manipulated every day for two months there is a special kind of weight to it,” she points out, adding that “the palette, the experience of building images stitch by stitch and the ability to make pieces that are objects as much as they are windows or images is incredibly exciting for me.”

rAW EMOTION reesey Shaw, founder and executive director of Lux Art Institute in Encinitas, CA, was immediately drawn to Narrett’s work when she first saw it at a show in Miami a couple of years ago. “I especially felt the threads that she leaves hanging are almost like music and very emotional,” says Shaw, who keeps a close eye on contemporary artists from all over the world. “I felt that they were operatic and very courageous and inspiring, so I sought out her work after that and was very After watching The Affair, which is likely to inform this excited that we could bring her here.” new work, Narrett admits that “it had its silly moments,” but During a February residency at Lux, where her work was says that “it was interesting in terms of the basic but very real on view in one of several shows already exhibited this year in existential premise of how differently two people can perceive California, Long Island, New York state and Massachusetts, the same interaction or conversation.” Narrett approached her recent exploration of emotional games Unlike her linear series This Meant Nothing, the new and relationships from a new direction. project is “a more branching, circular narrative,” Narrett says. “The embroideries and sculptures that I worked on at Lux “There are pieces that are meant to establish the setting or actually became attempts to describe moments of respite, history, pieces that will be clustered together as simultaneous escape and recovery from the types of experiences characteris- events and pieces that are meant to exemplify alternate tic of the overall narrative,” Narrett explains. In both I Can’t endings.” Stop Crying Except Sometimes When I Think About Ari Gold In keeping with an emphasis on materiality and tactility, and Self Care she looks at notions of withdrawal and self- Narrett presents her embroideries unframed and hung about protection. It’s part of a new body of work she’s preparing for an inch off the wall, which creates a natural shadow—an a September solo show at Freight + Volume, the gallery that organic framing that lends the work dimension and impact. represents her in New York. “She’s very contemporary,” Shaw says, pointing out that “The project began as an exploration of how transcendent “framing work is kind of an old-fashioned technique [that] cuts emotional and sexual experiences can be,” Narrett explains, the emotional impact of the work by a third. With the glass and “and the type of creative space that intense relationships can the frame, it’s almost like imprisoning it. And so what she’s potentially foster for the people involved. I’m thinking a lot doing by hanging it on a nail and making it really present… the about different ways people try to connect—and also what thread becomes the paint, and it’s very visceral. She’s found happens when these efforts fall short or backfire.” and created her own muse. It’s incredible.” photos by Stan Narten

24 // following the thread Sophia Narrett MFA 14 PT sophianarrett.com // RISDXYZ spring/summer 2 016 25 2018 By Leslie Camhi THE NEW YORK TIMES STYLE MAGAZINE

THE ANCIENT GREEKS put fate in the hands of three old women, goddesses who spun the thread of life, twisted it to allot each individual a measure of joy or sorrow, and wielded the “abhorred shears” (in the poet John Milton’s phrase) that could cut life short. The Greeks knew something that artists, along with a new generation of “craftivists” (people combining craft with activism), are rediscovering — that fiber (woven, knitted, braided, quilted, crocheted, embroidered) can be an expressive medium, one more powerful, perhaps, for its ubiquity. Textiles, after all, accompany us on nearly every step of life: We are born and swaddled, buried in shrouds; most of us are even conceived between sheets.

The renewed embrace of fiber might have something to do with our increasingly virtual world, scrubbed freer every day of human contact and face-‐-to-‐-face interaction. Textiles, in contrast, are earthy and inherently tactile. We speak of the “hand” of fabric, meaning the feel of it — whether slick and cool or rough and grainy. We speak, too, of the “fabric of society,” especially when it is unraveling.

“Modern industry saves us endless labor and drudgery,” the Berlin-‐-born artist and designer Anni Albers noted back in 1965 in “On Weaving,” her pioneering compendium on the art, reissued last October to coincide with her retrospective at the Guggenheim Bilbao. “But, Janus-‐-faced,” she continued, “it … leaves idle our sense of touch.” Both her hand-‐-loomed abstract tapestries and her factory-‐-produced functional fabrics tempered the harsh glass-‐-and-‐- steel architecture of her Modernist contemporaries.

In 1922, Albers joined the Bauhaus — the school Walter Gropius founded in Weimar with the utopian aim of integrating art and design into everyday life — as a reluctant weaver. A neuromuscular disorder causing weakness in her legs contributed to her abandonment of wall painting. But then she heard Paul Klee’s famous lecture that drawing involved “taking a line for a walk,” and decided to adapt the lesson to her new medium. “I thought,” she later recalled, “I will take thread everywhere I can.”

In the late 1950s, when Albers’s husband, Josef, was heading the Department of Design at Yale University, he introduced his wife to a student who’d been turned on to textiles after seeing a picture of Peruvian mummy bundles. Now in her 80s, Sheila Hicks has woven, twined and wrapped her way around the world with fiber-‐-based bas-‐-reliefs and installations that snake through tall grasses (on view through the end of the month on Manhattan’s High Line), pile up in brilliantly colored heaps (as at last year’s Venice Biennale) or cascade from high places (as in a piece planned for a 22-‐-foot tower on Capri). Her retrospective, which opened last month at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, also showcases the small, jewel-‐-like weavings she calls “minimes,” incorporating shells, rubber bands, toothpicks and hair — eccentric, lyrical poetry of the everyday.

Hicks is sometimes linked with other ’60s and ’70s post-‐-Minimalist sculptors, including Françoise Grossen and Jackie Winsor, female artists who turned to fiber (often rope) both for its formal properties and its associations beyond the art world, its household and industrial applications. Other artists of that era put textiles at the center of an explicitly feminist program, using conventionally “dainty” handicrafts — knitting, crocheting, embroidery — to express ambivalence about childbearing, or rage at women’s domestic oppression. For “Womanhouse,” a fabled group installation organized by Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro in an abandoned Hollywood mansion in 1972, the artist Faith Wilding created a room-‐-size net of crochet work that recalled spider webs, Gothic horror films and human tissue, including uterine lining.

These artists weren’t necessarily thinking of posterity. Textiles are notoriously difficult to conserve. Some fiber artists, taking their cues from the newly insurgent genre of performance art, intended their works to be temporary. Grossen, known for her sculptures and installations of braided rope that hang from the ceiling or twist along the floor, saw many of her largest works dismantled as the spaces they were created for (building lobbies, corporate offices) were altered or changed hands. The Polish-‐- born artist Magdalena Abakanowicz, who for nearly three decades beginning in the 1960s created haunting abstract sculptures in burlap and sisal, began working in bronze (a more traditionally “heroic” medium, valued for its durability) in the late 1980s. In fact, in the hierarchy of artistic materials, textiles (with the exception of tapestries) have often occupied a lowly rank. Toward the end of her life, even Anni Albers gave away her loom and her stock of threads, turning her attention to printmaking. “She said she realized that as a textile designer or weaver she would never be admitted to the magic circle of art,” Sheila Hicks recalls.

YET A GENERATION later, fiber art looks fresh again. Two years ago, for example, the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Arkansas purchased one of octogenarian artist, author and activist Faith Ringgold’s “story quilts” for $461,000 — a record (times 30) for the artist. The quilts, which the painter began making in 1980 — inspired by Tibetan thangkas, her seamstress and designer mother and her great-‐-great-‐-great-‐-grandmother, who quilted as a slave — combine painted canvas, fabric piecework and handwritten text to reclaim unexplored corners of African-‐-American life and history. And for emerging artists, fiber offers renewed possibilities of eloquence and emotivity. Sophia Narrett, a recent Rhode Island School of Design graduate whose solo exhibition of embroideries opens at Brooklyn’s BRIC Arts/Media center in May, wrote in an email, “When an object is developed by human hands for hundreds of hours, it leaves a quality in the surface that can be sensed.” Her wall hangings, stitched with cotton thread in a lush, painterly style, detail surreal encounters — naked figures cavorting in basements and woodlands; immolated princesses. Their hand-‐-worked surfaces make them seem intimate and vulnerable, in keeping with her art’s themes. “This physical commitment is a part of how I communicate my sincerity,” Narrett explained. “Embroidery and its implicit history help specify the tone of my stories, one characterized by obsession, desire and both the freedoms and restraints of femininity.”

Jane Austen, who sat writing “Pride and Prejudice” in a drawing room corner as her women friends whiled away the hours embroidering, might have arched an eyebrow. Can we really fight patriarchy with weapons borrowed from the history of upper-‐-and-‐-middle-‐-class women’s confinement? But then one remembers the one million knit “pussy hats” that appeared at last year’s Women’s March in Washington. Pussy hat co-‐-creator Jayna Zweiman learned to knit while in architecture school and returned to it while recovering from an injury. “I went with my friend Krista to a knitting store and discovered a place where you could be with people and listen,” she said on the phone from L.A. “Things kind of flow, and everyone is supportive. I think it’s a fantastic model for community.”

Zweiman’s most recent effort is the Welcome Blanket project: more than 2,675 40-‐-by-‐-40-‐-inch blankets, created by people from across the U.S. and abroad in response to President Trump’s proposed border wall. After being exhibited at the University of Chicago’s Smart Museum of Art last fall, the blankets — objects of protest transformed into instruments of comfort and hospitality — are currently being distributed to newly arrived refugees.

In fact, fiber art, with its inherent portability (you can fold it, roll it, wear it) seems uniquely suited to our era of geopolitical crisis and mass migration. In “Sanctuary” — a recent project by the San Francisco-‐-based FOR-‐-SITE Foundation — handmade wool rugs designed by 36 international artists reflecting on themes of refuge, cultural identity and displacement covered the floor of Fort Mason Chapel. Visitors were asked to remove their shoes to experience the work: “It makes people feel more vulnerable,” the curator Cheryl Haines explained. “But the rugs are so sumptuous — people tell me they also feel calmed and engulfed.” That’s something the Chinese artist Lin Tianmiao also noticed in her recent show at New York’s Galerie Lelong & Co., for which she carpeted the space with antique Chinese rugs, thickly embroidered with words in several languages denoting “woman,” ranging from cryptic sexual slang (“burger”) to expressions of devotion (“goddess”). Many of the phrases were derogatory, and yet “it surprised me,” Lin said, “that almost every viewer seemed to be very happy within the work.”

Call it the “fiber effect,” if you will. It must be part of what motivates guerrilla yarn-‐-bombers who, under cover of darkness, envelope fire hydrants, tree trunks and parking meters with knitted coverings that seem like the product of someone’s seriously wacky grandmother. (The movement’s Texas-‐-based founder, Magda Sayeg, once knitted the equivalent of a tea cozy for an entire Mexico City bus.) In a political climate marked by its coldheartedness, let’s not underestimate fiber’s power to evoke memories of a more congenial era, to celebrate the handmade and, not incidentally, invoke wonder and that rarest and most coveted of emotions: joy. 2018 By Emma Howcroft WHITEHOT MAGAZINE

It’s no surprise that Internet culture has lent itself to a runaway experiment in voyeurism. Visual cues are a universal currency, and persona is the gatekeeper of new American dream. To some, this constant surveillance is an anxiety-inducing test of self worth, and the amassing of personal information feels like a bloodletting. For others, there is a fascinating transformation in the way we interact: the taboo has become habitual. Peeping Tom is no longer a shadowy anonymous, he is us, and this is changing the way we think about intimacy and love. Artist Sophia Narrett delights in these grotesque dualities, and her current exhibition Certain Magic, on view at BRIC Arts Media through June 17th, tackles the questions surrounding deviance, voyeurism, and attachment in the age of information. Narrett, a recent graduate of RISD’s MFA program, has developed a medium that blurs the lines between painting, embroidery, and sculpture. Her meticulous wall hangings consist of thread woven over wire, which allows the work to unfurl in all directions including outwards, almost in invitation. Narrett’s use of embroidery is essential to her subject matter. Once the epitome of “woman’s work,” embroidery has traditionally implied rigidity and structure, beauty and simplicity. Narrett has agitated embroidery into a contemporary shade of its original presentation; her figuration is decided and unflinching, and along the edges of these pieces, threads trail off into loose, shapeless waterfalls of material, suggesting that the image is undoing itself from the outside in. In discussion with T Magazine this year, she explained, “Embroidery and its implicit history help specify the tone of my stories, one characterized by obsession, desire and both the freedoms and restraints of femininity.” Acutely aware of legacy, many of the works in Certain Magic are framed by prominent flowers, as if in homage to the original imagery favored by the women who pioneered the art. Certain Magic is most striking in its narratives, and the disquieting relationship forged between viewer and object intimates a calculated environment that verges on installation. Each piece broaches sexuality, dark comedy, and cultural iconography. In her largest work yet, Right Before, Narrett traces a scene that would delight Anaïs Nin. The work takes a skull-like shape, crowned with Narrett’s characteristic web of petals and diffusing into a tangle of strings, like the dream is crumbling Inception-style. Here, the naturalistic, oblong architecture of Narrett’s work simulates a sort of portal—a secret window into a luminescent other-space. At the heart of Right Before, bodies are tangled in spider-like loops of limbs. Above them, a man appears to be in the midst of proposing to his lover, rose petals falling around them in a Bachelor-esque fantasy. To the right, another man in cocktail attire descends a staircase with a naked woman balanced on his shoulder. And, both above and below, figures watch the scene. Contemplative, they are our company in witnessing this feverish bender. Voyeurism is so central to the work that it even spectates itself, or maybe provides an example for how it might want to be viewed. These ecstatic worlds are absorbing, but the window effect keeps us at a distance. I had the sensation of unveiling something incredibly intimate without trespassing and without judgment.

The figures that people Certain Magic are culled from various corners of pop culture, and they reflect the frenetic mental collage of instantly accessible media. Fractured interaction is at the core of the work: characters screwing, navigating strange engagements, popping out of manholes, or peering out from the background. Some of Narrett’s characters are absorbed in solitary daydreams, as in Afternoon Nap, which renders the listlessness of a lazy day spent in bed, endlessly scrolling in evening light—perfectly Instagrammable. These figures function as discrete islands of activity, not dissimilar to an imagistic newsfeed. They act out the motions of love, sex, and desire, yet they seem strangely untethered to one another, existing beyond the realm of responsibility and connection. This sense of fragmentation and isolation is also mirrored in the installation of the wall hangings themselves, which are spaced in irregular intervals of high and low. On her use of media references, Narrett writes in an email to me, “I think of it as using characters and images from pop culture as the language to tell my own stories in. It becomes a way to interact with media narratives about love and beauty, including the aspects that I’m drawn to as well as those that disturb or disappoint me.”

Certain Magic is an enchanting and confident step forward for an artist whose voice, vision, and vocabulary are truly unique. Sophia Narett transforms analog threads into transmission lines: digital messengers revealing the truth of modern life alongside the cyberverse, with all of its triumphs, unease, and multiplicity. WM In a paradisiacal world, Sophia Narrett would play with dolls all day.

“I had this doll house that my dad and brother made me,” Narrett recalls of the wooden structure in her hometown of Ellicott City, Md. “I made tons of things to go in it … and I was always acting out narratives between the dolls.”

She was 8 years old.

“I played with Barbie dolls until I was in eighth grade,” she says. “I did not want to stop playing with dolls.”

She’s 28 now and an artist known for embroidered images — intricate and detailed depictions of life and landscapes both realistic and fantastical, often sexual.

“I think that is what is still going on here. I want to engage critically with pop culture and social issues … and I feel a deep responsibility for the type of images I’m putting out into the world, but at the same time, when I am truly just starting a piece, I feel like it’s more connected to doll play.”

Narrett — who’s currently in residence at Lux Art Institute in Encinitas — is a young artist whose work is informed by pop culture references: “Orange Is the New Black.” Hip-hop artist Kendrick Lamar. Scottish fashion designer Christopher Kane. “The Bachelor.” Her embroidered pieces are colorful, both literally and figuratively, manifestations of the world she inhabits.

“It’s usually based on my life, to be honest,” says Narrett, now based in Brooklyn. “That’s where the kernel of it comes from, like some experience that I’ve had, or if not an experience, a fantasy. And then movies and books and things in pop culture that I’ve interacted with will expand the idea. I watch a lot of TV — or listen to it while I sew. I love long-form narratives. Reality shows or dramas that go on for a while. I think I’ve watched ‘The Sopranos’ and ‘The Wire’ twice all the way through.”

Her early works — some are on display at Lux — center on a singular narrative. Her most recent works — like the “Bachelor”-inspired sequential narrative that’s part of this exhibit, “Collapsing Fantasy” — are more complex, often united with a singular story arc but teeming with characters and vignettes, some illustrating scenes shown over a period of time. Narrett’s latter pieces are reminiscent of 16th-century Dutch painter Hieronymus Bosch, known for his detailed landscapes and wild images, most fantastical and sexual in nature. Like Bosch, Narrett engages the viewer in images so complex, so detailed that looking at them and following the narrative, especially the sequential ones, almost feels voyeuristic. “I’m really interested in narrative through still images, and even further, through objects. I’m interested in how these are images but also objects. This idea of doing a sequential project was something I was excited about in terms of pushing the plot and especially in terms of allowing a readable experience from piece to piece, but it was also important to me that they function on their own discretely,” she says while standing in front of “Stars Align,” the second of a four-part sequence that begins with “The Rose Ceremony,” where “Orange Is the New Black” actress Samira Wiley is whisked away by “Orange Is the New Black” writer Lauren Morelli, who divorced her husband in real life to date Wiley.

What distinguishes Narrett from Bosch’s approach to imagery is the medium. Although she began her artistic career painting in oil, just as Bosch did, Narrett fell in love with thread while working on a sculpture.

“Finding embroidery was serendipitous for me,” Narrett says. “I actually started because I had some sculptures and I had some embroidery thread that I was trying to make some hair out of, and it was totally random. I thought the colors of the thread were beautiful. … What if I did a little drawing with them? And then from there, it got more and more elaborate. I’m so glad I found it, or maybe it found me.”

‘Something real’ On a recent Wednesday morning, Narrett walked through the artist pavilion at Lux explaining the genesis of each of the pieces hanging on the main gallery’s white walls. In a far corner sat a 20-gallon-size black trash bag. Inside: thread. Lots and lots of thread.

“I just I love working with the material,” says Narrett, who works with 100 percent cotton thread she buys at Michaels. “I was always a painter before … but with painting, I never was as invested in the material as I was in the image. I didn’t really enjoy painting. I enjoyed making the idea, and I enjoyed having the image and showing people the image, but I wasn’t invested in the paint itself — that was always lacking. “Painting taught me a lot about color and composition, and that plays out here,” she says, her eyes panning the sunlit room. “I want them to work as paintings. In some ways, I don’t think they’re any different from paintings. But what I do really love about embroidery is the specificity of the image and also the time element.

“I don’t mean to fetishize the fact that it takes a long time to create something, but there is something real about the commitment involved,” says Narrett, who created the four-part “Bachelor”-inspired sequence between September 2014 and May 2015.

Reesey Shaw, founder and executive director of Lux, says there was something special about Narrett’s work when she first saw it. She followed her for a while before approaching her with the idea of coming to Encinitas for a residency.

“I especially felt the threads that she leaves hanging are almost like music and very emotional,” says Shaw, who’s always scouting artists from all over the globe. “I felt that they were operatic and very courageous and inspiring, so I sought out her work after that and was very excited that we could bring her here.”

Narrett’s embroidered art hangs about an inch off the surface, creating its own frame through shadows. And it’s that organic framing that gives the work a new dimension, Shaw says.

“She’s very contemporary,” she says. “Framing work is kind of an old-fashioned technique. Frames cut the emotional impact of the work by a third. With the glass and the frame, it’s almost like imprisoning it. And so what she’s doing by hanging it on the nail and making it really present … the thread becomes the paint, and it’s very visceral. She’s found and created her own muse. It’s incredible.”

Fighting the limits Born in 1987 in Concord, Mass., Narrett grew up the daughter of a physician father and a stay-at-home mother. Her first exposure to art came courtesy of her paternal grandmother.

“She was a painter,” Narrett recalls, “and she loved to copy Chagall paintings. I think that was really present in my mind. And his paintings, especially the ones with the floating bodies … I think that was my idea of what a painting was. And even more so, what art was.”

That artistic curiosity matured at Brown University, where she graduated magna cum laude with a bachelor’s in visual art in 2010. Four years later, she received a master’s in fine art from the Rhode Island School of Design. Her residency at Lux is her sixth solo exhibition. Most recently, her exhibit “This Meant Nothing” was at the Arts+Leisure gallery in New York. At Lux, she will create two pieces while in residency, one embroidered work and one sculpture. It’ll be the first time she’s created work in front of the public, but not the first time she’s gone on a deep dive into a project. She’s had stretches of nearly 24-hour embroidery marathons, and she’s come out of them unscathed.

Almost.

“In grad school, there was a period of time when I was sewing for 16 hours a day for two weeks before the thesis show,” she recalls. “I stopped for a day because we had critiques, and I looked down saw that a finger was so swollen.”

There is in Narrett — soft-spoken in person but bold in her artwork — a passion for pushing the envelope and pushing herself.

“I don’t think I ever said this is what I’m going to do for the rest of my life,” she says. “But when I realized I liked it, I was just so excited. And then I asked myself how can I make the next one better? How can I make the next one bigger? How can I make the next one more detailed?”

Pointing to the faces of the two central characters in “Stars Align,” she says, “I redid both of their faces. I’m always fighting the limits of how detailed I can get, fighting the limits of thread.”

2015 By Jullian Steinhauer HYPERALLERGIC

In artist Sophia Narrett‘s current solo show at Arts+Leisure, two women meet on the set of The Bachelor and swiftly fall in love — with each other. They run off to have an affair in a bucolic garden, surrounded by lounging naked women, couples and threesomes having sex, and, strangely, Kendrick Lamar. But something goes wrong. Something involving guns. The pair splits, and in the end we are left stranded with our uncertainty in a harsh, wintry cityscape accented by a deep, bloody red. (The show’s title: This Meant Nothing.)

Narrett conveys all this in just four fantastical embroideries, each one bursting with figures, thread, colors, and motifs. Part of the appeal of these pieces is their unabashed too-muchness, their revelry in a maximalist approach to both medium and story. In the exhibition’s middle two pieces, “Stars Align” (2014) and “Something Went Wrong” (2014–15), there is no single scene of focus; time lapses and shifting perspective, as well as a parade of bodies engaged in sexual acts and erotic poses — which Narrett calls “eroticism as ornamentation,” and which feel like a nod to Hieronymus Bosch — keep our eye circling, attempting to turn a strongly articulated feeling into some more fleshed-out story or meaning. This is the careful balance struck by all of the works in the show, both individually and as a unit: on the one hand, highly narrative; on the other, difficult to completely read.

A similarly successful tension animates the threadwork itself. Narrett finds most of her images on Tumblr and other online sources — the protagonists in this series are based on Lauren Morelli, a writer for the TV show Orange Is the New Black, and Samira Wiley, one of the show’s main actresses, who did really meet and fall in love on set. She then crafts a narrative, Photoshops collage mock-ups, and sews them into three-dimensional existence, giving herself “over to this process … [which] almost dictates what the work will look like in the end.” Her hours of work are evident in the intense layering of thread, each lone body or flower petal seeming to contain hundreds of stitches and dozens of colors. From far away they coalesce enough to sustain the images they comprise; up close, a face and torso dissolve into stitches and lines and small passages of color. (My first referential thought upon seeing them was Brian Adam Douglas’s recent, painstaking paper collage work.) It’s as if Narrett insisted on sewing until she couldn’t anymore, stopped not by physical pain but by artistic climax, a knowledge of just how far to push without pushing over.

The essentials of Narrett’s practice are familiar: dramatic, allover embroideries and the process of using pop- culture images to make art (not to mention rendering them in a handmade medium). But her reclamation of both for her own purposes is compelling. She takes the images we all see and bracingly sews and stitches them together until they become something utterly different, and hers. Would that all our fantasies were so well- crafted.