Intimate

Artist Steve Roden (American, 1964 - 2023)

Date1990

MediumFound fabric, embroidery floss, beads, and pencil

DimensionsUnframed: 8 1/2 x 5 1/2 in. (21.6 x 14 cm)

ClassificationsTextile

Credit LineGift of the Steven and Sari Roden Family Trust

Object number2025.4.55

Label TextThese embroidered pieces come from Roden’s series titled Intimate. While not a practiced sewist, Roden was inspired by partially completed embroideries he found at a garage sale. Roden added his own embroideries to these scraps, giving the pieces new life while embracing the original artist. Roden was always open to trying new things, never wanting to limit his thinking and creating to one medium. These pieces were made around the same time as his anatomy of touch series; one can see the similarities between the shapes and composition.

"One day in 1990, I was with some friends going to garage sales... For many years, I did this looking to buy rare records or vintage furniture, but in this instance, we walked into the garage and there was fabric and beads, and other craft items, and so I sat with her, talking about her life and why she had all this fabric with strange sewing exercises of different shapes. She was a really interesting lady, and I asked her why she was throwing out these things that she had made 60 years ago... she thought I was crazy to want to buy these 'useless' things. A few years later I found them in my own garage, and I remembered this lady, and also the fabric, and it seemed time to bring it back to life. I had never done any sewing, so it was an opportunity to work in a medium for which I don't have any skills. At the time I was working on paintings related to the parts of the human body's sense of touch, and it felt as if the ideas and the collisions offered me a path." - Steve Roden

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