Lauren Di Cioccio has a completely charming series, with her 35mm Sewnslides which will soon be on exhibition at the Armony Center for the Arts in Pasadena, California. She has has two other upcoming shows, and so it goes, a solo show at the Walker Contemporary in Boston in May, and Critical Stitch at the Mandeville Galery at Union College in Schenectady, NY this Fall. Philadelphia born, Lauren now lives in the Bay Area, just south of San Francisco. Since moving to California in 2004, she has worked as the Resident Manager at the Djerassi Resident Artists Program, where she lives on-site in a cabin overlooking the Pacific Ocean.

Though trained as a painter, (she received her BA from Colgate University where she studied art and art history) much of her work uses embroidery techniques that she learned as a child from her mother. Lauren must not spend too much time looking at the ocean, because she has many wonderful projects, that that require labor intensive efforts.

My work investigates the physical/tangible beauty of commonplace mass-produced media-objects, most recently: the newspaper, magazines, office papers and writing pads, plastic bags, 35 mm slides. These media are becoming obsolete, replaced by the invisible efficiency of various technologies. In some cases, this transition is a good thing- faster transmission and distribution of information, streamlined systems, openness to user input, less waste. But a hole is left behind by the disappearance of these everyday objects. What will happen when we no longer touch information? When newsprint does not rub off onto our fingertips? When we no longer write longhand?

The tedious handiwork and obsessive care I employ to create my work aims to remind the viewer of these simple but intimate pieces of everyday life and to provoke a pang of nostalgia for the familiar physicality of these objects.



These embroideries are life-size sculptural recreations of 35 mm slides I have collected. I am drawn to slides as precious objects: the fragility of the translucent negative material and intimacy of the scale of a palm-sized slide are particularly endearing- I hope to capture this tenderness in my sculptures. To make these little pieces, I embroider directly onto bridal organza, a very delicate translucent material, and allow the excess threads to pour out the back and hang down the wall.