My 8th Tiny Pricks, Playing In The Sand

The hankie for my next #tinypricks.  A duck, pig, and bear, three separate nations, playing in the sand.

“So there’s a lot of sand there they can play with“. Jon read the quote from Donald Trump out loud as we sat in the living room drinking tea after dinner.

I had heard Trump say these words earlier in the day on the radio, referring to the fighting that is going on between Syria and Turkey and the attack on the  Kurds since Trump pulled the US troops out of Syria.  But hearing them again an instinct kicked in that caught my attention.

“That’s a tinypricks quote“, I said to Jon and asked him to repeat it while I grabbed a scrap of paper and wrote it down.

In my studio this morning I began working on the quilt I started yesterday.  As I was looking for the right color red for the quilt, I stepped over the overflowing box of linens on my floor and thought of the President’s dismissive and condescending words comparing war to children playing.

That’s when the small collection of children’s hankies that I have came to mind.

Even though my fabric isn’t well organized, I do have an idea of where things are.  So I emptied the basket I use to stash the “special” linens, and there it was, just what I was looking for.  Although I didn’t specifically remember it,  my heart beat a little faster and what felt like a small current of electricity ran through my body.

It felt magical, like the basket had produced exactly what I needed.

The small hankie had an embroidery of a bear, a pig and a duck (three separate nations) dressed in bathing suits, with their shovels and pails, playing in the sand.

This will be my 8th #tinypricks.  I am grateful to Diana Weymar, once again, for providing this form to work in and to be a part of this creative protest.

You can make your own #tinypricks,  click here to see how.   And if you need a linen or hankie to stitch it on I’ll be happy to send you some.  You can email me at [email protected].

Sharing Linens For The Tiny Pricks Project

#tinypricks  By Carol Beck

I’ve made seven Tiny Pricks, and each time I do, I offer to send hankies and linens to anyone who wants to make one themselves and needs a linen to embroider it on.

A few weeks ago Kathy sent me a box of vintage linens.  I used one of them to make a #tinypricks with a quote about Gretchen Thunberg.  Then I got an email from Carol.  She wanted to make a #tinypricks and needed something to embroider it on.

So I went through the box of linens from Kathy and my stash of hankies and picked out a few to send her.

A few days ago Carol sent me this photo of the #tinypricks she stitched on Kathy’s linen.  I love how she used the same color thread as the flowers on the linen.  It gives it a sense of history as if her words were always there.  It seems a timeworn truth, depicting the true character of Trump.

Diana Weymar’s Tiny Prick Project is a collaborative one.  It depends on people participating in it by stitching quotes from Donald Trump on vintage linens which are then hung all together in galleries around the country, making a powerful statement.

My being able to participate, not only by creating #tinypricks but by sharing the linens and hankies that other people have given to me, feel as much a part of the project as a finished piece.  Because it is in keeping with the collaborative and cooperative spirit of #tinypricks.

And when I think of that single linen, used to help give voice to Carol and her art, I think of its original intent and how it’s original owner couldn’t have imagined that, with the help of four other women, it would become a piece of art and history.

If anyone else out there would like to make a #tinypricks, and needs a linen or hankie to stitch it on, just email me here at [email protected].  I’ll be very happy to send you some.  For more information on how to participate in The Tiny Pricks Project, click here. 

My Sixth Tiny Pricks, Inspired By Greta Thunberg

My 6th #tinypricks 

“...Sarcasm is actually hostility disguised as humor.”  Psychology Today

“sarcasm, “a cutting remark,” comes from a Greek verb, sarkazein, that literally means “to tear flesh like a dog.”  Merriam-Webster’s Student Dictionary. 

Greta Thunberg’s speech at the United Nations Climate Change Summit on Monday must have really bothered Trump.  It’s obvious by his sarcastic and demeaning tweet to Thunberg.

I personally never learned how to deal with this kind of bullying.  It’s one of the reasons that it thrills me to see that 16-year-old Greta Thunberg isn’t fazed by it.  She knew just how to respond to the bitter and childish taunt made by our 73-year-old President.

But then she is leading a Climate Change Movement in 150 countries.  She doesn’t really have time for Trump’s nonsense.

When Trump tweeted  “She seems like a very happy young girl looking forward to a bright and wonderful future.”  “So nice to see!”  Greta’s brilliant response was to take Trump’s words and reclaim them for herself by using them as her Twitter Bio.

And those are the words I chose to embroider for my 6th #tinypricks.  Because they say so much about Thunberg and Trump.

I found the perfect linen to embroider them on in a box of vintage linens that Kathy just sent me.

The embroidered sailboat was already on the linen. It is, of course, making reference to the boat that Thunberg sailed to the United States on from England to  “avoid the greenhouse gas emissions that come with flying on a commercial jet.”

If you haven’t already watched Greta Thunberg’s intelligent and moving speech at the UN Climate Change Summit you can watch it here.

If you’d like to know more about or participate in the Tiny Pricks Project, click here.  See all the Tiny Pricks here. 

And if you need a linen or hankie to stitch a #tinypricks on, I’d be happy to send you some.  Just email me here at [email protected]

Making my Tiny Pricks

 

My Fifth Tiny Pricks “Age of Trump”

Age of Trump, my 5th Tiny Pricks

I see Tiny Pricks as a creative protest.

Each time I find the perfect linen to go with the right Trump quote and add it to the other Tiny Pricks made by women all over the country, I feel like my voice becomes a little louder.

I could send an email to the White House, but I know it will fall on deaf ears.  It’s so much more satisfying and empowering to create a small protest on an old hankie that will not only last longer and reach more people, but documents a moment in our history.

This is my fifth Tiny Pricks. I believe in the power of art and in the power of words.

When I see the pictures on Instagram of over 1000 Tiny Pricks hanging together, I think of what a single pinprick feels like, compared to how a thousand must feel.

 

 

My Fifth Tiny Pricks

The hankie I’m using for my fifth Tiny Pricks

I pulled this hankie out of my stash last week.  When I saw it I just knew I’d be able to use it for a Tiny Pricks at some point.

If found the perfect Donald Trump quote quicker than I would have thought.  It came from a tweet he made last Wednesday…

“When the ‘Age of Trump’ is looked back on many years from now, I only hope that a big part of my legacy will be the exposing of massive dishonesty in the Fake News!

In his narcissism, Trump wrote of the “Age of Trump” as if it would one day be seen as a time of glory.

I don’t want to try and imagine what that world would be like.  But I have hope that the “Age of Trump” will be seen as the end of a way of thinking and behaving.

Lots of people had fun responding to this tweet, so I thought I’d have some fun too.

I’ll stitch the words “Age of Trump” right in the center of this hankie, with baby blue thread.  That little boy, threatening anyone who gets in his way, seems to me the perfect metaphor for the “Age of Trump”.

 

Going To Maine To See The Tiny Pricks Project

A screen shot from the Tiny Pricks Project on Instagram. (That’s one of mine, third down on the left) These are just a few of the Tiny Pricks created by people from all over the country. There are over 1000 so far.

When the Tiny Pricks Project was in a gallery in NYC I thought about going to see it, but didn’t.  Now it’s going to be at the Speedwell Gallery in Portland Maine.

So Jon and I are going.

I wanted to be there for the opening reception September 14, but Nicole, our farm sitter wasn’t available.  So we’re going the weekend after.  Which, when I thought about, it is probably even better.

Opening Receptions are like parties to me.  If someone asks me to go to a party a month away, I’m all eager, thinking it will be fun.  But a few days before I start to get jiggy about it.  On the way there,  I wonder why I ever agreed to go.

At first, I was disappointed not to be going to the opening, but when I pictured myself in the crowded gallery, with people standing around talking, I started to get that uncomfortable feeling.

And suddenly the thought of me in a quiet gallery, taking as much leisurely time as I chose to look at the exhibit, was very appealing.

We’re planning on staying somewhere south of Portland overnight, I’m still working all of it out, but excited to be going.  I’ll be sure to get pictures and blog about it.

The Tiny Pricks Project will be at the Speedwell Gallery from September 14 – November 3rd.  Click here for more information.

“Come Together” My Fourth Tiny Pricks

A good friend emailed me after Donald Trump was elected president.  She told me she voted for Trump and some people she knew, who disagreed with her choice, were angry with her giving her a hard time.  Some of them wouldn’t talk to her anymore.

It was during that time, just after the election, when I was trying to figure out how I would deal with the results of the election,  that I decided one thing I would not do is let the divisive nature of the Trump campaign and presidency make me divisive too.

I could and would express my feelings and beliefs without hating my friends and neighbors.

After the mass shootings in Texas and Ohio, when Donald Trump was asked by a reporter if he thought his rhetoric was divisive he replied, “My rhetoric is very—it brings people together.”

This absurd doublespeak by the president left me speechless.

But I did find my voice, in creating a Tiny Pricks.

With Trump’s words in mind, I looked through my stash of vintage linens and hankies that people have been sending me for years.  In a collection of small children’s hankies, I found what I was looking for.

I always found this hankie a strange way to teach kids how to spell fox, goose and rabbit in five different languages. But I now its other lesson, about how the rabbits looked on happily as the fox ate the goose, knowing they were safe for a while, anyway,  was clear to me.

At first, I wanted to use the whole quote from Trump, how he stumbled over his words.  Not to ridicule him, but for accuracy.  But they didn’t fit as well on the hankie as the fewer words, that is the essence of his statement, did.  It’s more readable this way too and the words fit nicely between the images.

This is my fourth Tiny Pricks.  You can see the other three here.  And you can see all the Tiny Pricks in Diana Weymar’s #tinypricksproject   here and learn how to participate in it here at tinypricksproject.com.

And if you would like to make a Tiny Pricks but don’t have a linen or hankie to stitch it on, I’ll be happy to send you a couple.  Just email me at [email protected].  I’ve already mailed out hankies and linens to 5 or 6 people who are making their own Tiny Pricks.

Invasion/Infestation. My Third Tiny Pricks

Tiny Pricks Invasion/Infestation

My third Tiny Pricks, called Infestation/Invasion, turned out just as I pictured it.

I started with the vintage embroidery of a Mexican couple that someone sent me a while ago and surrounded them with the words, infestation and invasion.

Donald Trump has used these words again and again to describe immigrants and refugees coming into our country, and neighborhoods where people of color live. When used in this way, both words have a long racist history in the United States.

Language Columnist, Ben Zimmer wrote about them in two different articles.

In “Where does Trumps Invasion Rhetoric Come From“, Zimmer describes how in the late 1800s Chinese immigrants coming to the West Coast were thought of as unarmed, insidious, invaders.

When Chinese immigration was restricted in 1882, the word invasion continued to be used to describe other groups of people coming to the United States at different times in our history.

In his article  What Trump Talks About When He Talks About Infestations, The frightening political history of the word infest, Zimmer writes:  

Historically the verb “infest” has been used to talk not just about literal pests and diseases, but also to compare people—very often minorities and immigrant groups—to pests and diseases.”

He makes the point that when you compare people to pests and disease, they don’t have to be seen as people anymore.

Both words imply that something needs to be done to eradicate the people they refer to. “Infestations justify exterminations,” wrote NY Times columnist Charles M. Blow.  And military force is what we usually use to stop invaders.

You can follow my process of making Invasion/Infestation here.

My Fourth Tiny Pricks…

I just finished my third Tinypricks (I’ll write about it later) and came up with an idea for another one.

I had this quote on my mind (“I think my rhetoric is a very…er…it brings people together”)  since Trump said it. And today I found the perfect hankie to stitch it on.

You can see all the Tiny Pricks so far (along with mine) here. 

And don’t forget, if you’d like to make a Tiny Pricks, but need a hankie or linen to embroider it on, I’ll be happy to send you one.  Just email me here at [email protected].

You can read all about Diana Weymar’s Tiny Prick Project and how to participate here. 

Full Moon Fiber Art