An image of artist David Catá‘s grandmother stitched into the palm of his hand, 2013.
 
Spanish artist David Catá started out as a composer—but his interest in painting would soon overtake his musical aspirations. Later Catá would start experimenting with photography at the age of 22 in 2010. He would receive early accolades and awards for his work which has been displayed in galleries all over the world including New York and his home base of Spain.

Four years ago, Catá began photographing his ongoing series “A Flor De Piel” which chronicled the artist embroidering the palm of his hand with images of his family members, mentors, and even ex-girlfriends. According to Catá, every image his stitches into his flesh is someone that has helped him along his journey on planet Earth. Beautiful. Images of Catá‘s handiwork follow as well as a video of the artist in action with his needle and thread.
 

Carlos.
 

Bea, Catá‘s teacher and photography tutor, 2013.
 
More after the jump…

A fantastic embroidered piece by Australian artist, Adipocere.
 
Based in Melbourne, Australia, the embroidery artist known as “Adipocere,” adopted a word that has several somewhat sinister synonyms such as “grave wax,” “corpse wax,” or “mortuary wax.” By definition, adipocere is a light-gray substance produced by a cadaver as their fatty tissue decomposes—making the word a perfect match for the artist’s delightfully dreadful embroidery.

Adipocere (aka “Josh”) has been involved in the craft of embroidery since 2014 and currently his Instagram has 63.7K followers. On his Instagram feed the artist makes note of the fact that he also does embroidery on human skin. His work has been shown in galleries across the world, and according to the artist himself, he is aware of at least 60 people who have tattooed images of his dark embroidery onto their own skin. I understand that he occasionally sells his pieces and also has a few other items up for purchase via Big Cartel. The images below are slightly NSFW.
 

 

 

 
More after the jump…

 
These are quite beautiful—Jessica So Ren Tang’s embroidered pinups of “suggestively posed” women.

Jessica uses embroidery to explore her Asian-American identity—“the dualism of being too Asian to be American, and too American to be Asian.” Her work includes embroidered reproductions of Chinese bowls, takeaway noodle boxes, candy wrappers and decorative plates.

In her portrait series of pinup girls Jessica has replaced their “the facial identity” with exquisite Asian textile patterns.

The patterned skin creates a broader spectrum of Asian identity; it becomes more ambiguous and fluid as identity moves between the two.

The resulting image also captures an erotic charge between the model’s pose and the sensual nature of the embroidered patterns. Each portrait is hand embroidered on a piece of 8” x 10”  fabric. More of Jessica’s work can be seen here.
 

‘Girl 04’ (2016).
 

 
More of Jessica So Ren Tang’s fabulous work, after the jump…

Nico, Nude and Deaf in One Ear (recto and verso) - 2013 - 2014, 84” x 40”, hand embroidery on muslin
 
Masterful embroiderer Jenny Hart said she was really unhappy while away art school in France, so she dropped out of the program she had enrolled in and got a degree in French instead. Lucky for all of us, Hart continued to draw and thanks to inspiration from her beloved comic books and the legendary line drawings of R. Crumb, found her muse. Embroidery.

Since forming her company, Sublime Stitching, Hart’s work has been featured in publications likeVogue and The New York Times. Her work is privately owned by many collectors, including the estate of the late Elizabeth Taylor, as well as a piece that is part of a permanent display at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C.

Hart has even experimented sewing with human hair, an artistic dream that she wanted to make a reality for as long as she can remember. After an exhaustive search through the wig stores of LA (a great story on its own I’m sure), Hart found a wig made exclusively from human hair extensions. Despite this discovery, she ended up stringing her own hair through a piece of leather that would go on to become a piece called “Oh Unicorn”.
 

Patti Smith Transfigured (detail) - 2014, hand embroidery on cotton
 

Marianne Faithfull - 2005
 
In addition to the intoxicating images of Smith, Faithfull and Nico, Hart has also created embroidered versions of French cabaret singer Edith Piaf; La Chingona from SF-based Incredibly Strange Wrestling; Marianne Faithfull, The head of John the Baptist; Iggy Pop; Pink Floyd’s founder Syd Barrett, and many others. If you are handy with a needle and thread, take a look at some of the patterns you can make on your own that Hart created in collaboration with cartoonist, Jim Woordring. Many images of Hart’s work that your eyeballs will dig follow!
 

Edith Piaf: Piaf - 2002
 

Syd Barrett - 2003, hand embroidery on satin
 
More after the jump…
 

Rising Moons
 
Sally Hewett’s embroidery specializes in the four B’s—boobs, butt, boners, and bagina, and it has resulted in an intriguing and sometimes troubling body of work that has gotten the attention of the people at Saatchi Art, where her works run as high as $800 a pop.

Here’s Hewett’s high-minded description of the meaning of her artworks, although I think we all know that the real reason is that dicks and tits and butts are awesome and hilarious:
 

Men and women almost ritualistically shave and remove hair from their bodies – beards, underarm hair, pubic hair, leg hair etc, whereas other hair – hair on the head, eyebrows, eyelashes – are valued and encouraged to flourish. But there is other hair which not everyone has. Sometimes this special hair seems to be reason to feel ashamed. A large number of women and men submit their bodies to extraordinary procedures in the name of convention or beauty – liposuction, implants, scarification, surgery, laser treatment, electrolysis etc.

 
There’s a lot more of Hewett’s works on her website. Hewett is a graduate of the Kent Institute of Art and Design, where her dissertation focused, perhaps predictably, on “Hair and Body Detritus in Art.”

The degree to which Hewett’s work stands out is worthy of note—it’s difficult to find analogues for her work. If you look up 2010’s The Subversive Stitch by Rozsika Parker, what you’ll get is a carefully considered academic treatment of embroidery and femininity—not exactly the same thing. And Diana Grygo’s ebook Extreme Bead Embroidery isn’t half as exciting as it sounds.

Without further ado, and I have to tell you, it feels like I’ve been waiting all my life to write these words, the following embroidery is NSFW.
 
See Hewett’s marvelous works of embroidery after the jump…...