A Stitch in Time

In recent years, young women have begun to reclaim labor-intensive, old-fashioned “women’s work” like knitting and quilting, which their grandmothers perfected and their mothers likely shunned. Some of these women, such as Jessica Rankin, a thirty-four-year-old trained as a painter, aren’t just reclaiming these crafts; they’re elevating them to high-art status.

A few years ago, Rankin gave up oils on canvas for embroidery on organdy—the translucent, almost extinct cotton fabric that harks back to Victorian ladies’ summer fashions. She sews together rectangular panels in various shades—crisp white, midnight blue, the palest gray or green, an earthy brown—creating frameless pieces that hang a few inches from the wall; the seams and embroidery cast faint shadows that become a second layer of the work.

The six pieces currently on view at Franklin ArtWorks in Minneapolis (through November 19) range in size from about ten to almost fifty square feet. It’s a heroic scale that contrasts with the delicacy of the organdy, as well as the forms and words that are rendered upon it with careful, patient, deliberate marks—fly stitches, running stitches, French knots—made of shimmering thread.

For Rankin, care and deliberation don’t equal cogency. In fact, her work doesn’t attempt to make any traditional kind of sense. There are mountains and clouds, comets and constellations, and forms that recall topographical maps—all suggestive of exploration, both terrestrial and celestial. Arabesques evoke great swirls of time and distance, and other elements recall symbols used in the Aboriginal dream paintings from Rankin’s native Australia: Swoops or curves can refer to clouds, cliffs, or rainbows; circles interspersed with short lines might indicate rain.

Nor does the text woven into and around these forms serve its usual rational role; stitching the letters so that they all run together, Rankin pushes language back into the elusive realm of thought, even dreams. In Coda, where sinuous lines of brown thread suggest a mountainside, one string reads: TIMESTUTTERSDASHINGFROMMOMENTTOMOMENTTHEN SUDDENLYAMOMENTOFNOTLUCIDITYBUTARETURNTOTHROW

AWAYTONORMAL. Words and phrases might also overlap, or break off capriciously without necessarily picking up somewhere else, refusing to deliver a concrete message. These words are present as pointers, as symbols in themselves.

However, THISFINEMESHOFMEMORIESANDPRESENCE, another fragment from Coda, actually does provide a relatively clear explanation of what Rankin is creating, with a focus on process that manifests as a beautifully crafted product. Stitched together as meandering mental maps of life experiences—past, present, possible futures—these works sway intriguingly between intimacy and infinity.—Julie Caniglia